Jeep thing or sheep thing?

"'nuther Bob" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
SNIPPY
> Secondly, laws against incest can be argued on the basis of science
> and reproductive issues...

Actually, they can't. In states where marriage between cousins is allowed,
such as Colorado where I live but, oddly, not Arkansas, the incidence of
hereditary birth defects in children of such marriages is only slightly more
than in the general population. (The statistics were summarized a couple of
years ago in a Denver Rocky Mountain News article about people who had
married their cousins.) Since most hereditary birth defects are the result
of autosomal recessive genes which carry a defect, and the reason that the
incidence is increased in the issue of cousin marriages is inheritance from
a common ancestor, we can easily and accurately extrapolate from the
incidence in cousin marriages to the expected incidence of hereditary birth
defects in issue of sibling marriages. The result is still pretty small.
In fact, it is not really large enough for government to bother with laws
against it on the basis of preventing birth defects.

No, you cannot argue for laws against incest on the basis of science and
reproductive issues. The only justification for such laws is that most
people find incest disgusting.

Earle

On Sun, 06 Jul 2003 21:27:50 GMT, "Dave Milne" <jeep@_nospam_milne.info>wrote:

>Hey, you are the one calling yourself "mind melt"...

And your point? (besides the one on your head)

Marc wrote:

> "Earle Horton" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>Do you want Microsoft to document all APIs that are used, or do you want
>>some government entity to force them to do this? There is a difference. In
>>my humble opinion, Microsoft only has to give you what they want to give
>>you.
>
> Perfectly reasonable. However, when they give one maker of productivity
> software the documented APIs and don't give them to anyone else in an
> attempt to use their monopoly on the OS market to influence market share in
> other areas, that becomes illegal. It doesn't matter that these were
> separate divisions of the same company.

I know of no law or area of law that requires an OS maker to
release ANY of their various api's to anyone, or even to have
an api unless it is part of a government certification for
government contracting. And in those cases, the api itself
is tested for compliance.

It is also legal to sell a business partner details of an api
with or without a non-disclosure agreement, and refuse to sell
this same information to other businesses. It is also legal
to simply give that api information to a business partner and
withhold it from everyone else.
It is also perfectly legal for someone else to reverse engineer
the api and document it for private or public consumption.

Only when such is used in persuit of monopolistic practices
[which are decided by a court of law, not usenet postings]
that the courts care.

On the other hand, one of the largest beneficiaries of court
mandated disclosures in the past was the company making said
disclosure. Enough that it became standard practice. Seems
that internally within IBM, their own divisions had a hard
time getting such useful information. Enough so that some of
said engineers would actually contact Telex, Amdahl, etc. for
assistance.

As for Microsoft, wasn't aware their programming interfaces
were all that hard to get ahold of, but then haven't needed
to care since the days of their 5.1 C compiler suite.

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

> "DTJ" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>> Now,
>> if the computer company decided to charge them anyhow, that is not
>> Microsofts problem. In fact, vendors made more money and Microsoft
>> made less money by selling systems this way.
>>
>
> This is not true. The Microsoft contracts that were held up as the most
> explicit
> violators during the anti-trust trial all dictated that for EVERY PC that
> the OEM sold, that the
> OEM MUST SELL A WINDOWS LICENSE to the end user whether the user
> wanted it or not, or the OEM wanted to do so or not. Not coincidentally,
> these
> contracts were the ones that gave the best prices to the OEM, but they DID
> require that the OEM sell a Windows license to the end user WITH EVERY PC
> SOLD.

I believe this to have been the case, specifically for one OEM that
was considering releasing AmigaDOS on the Intel platform. I don't
recall whether Compaq was involved thusly for their Xenix line of
systems...which predated Win/NT networking.

"Bill Putney" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> >
> > ...For example, there's still penty of anti-homosexual sex (ie: sodomy) laws on
> > plenty of
> > state laws. However unless you knew about the recent Supreme Court
> > ruling on the Texas sodomy thing, you wouldn't know that now all of these
> > gay sex laws are essentially illegal, unenforceable, unprosecutable.
> >
> > Ted
>
> ...and if the same wonderful human "logic" and "wisdom" continue to be
> applied by our lawyer friends, with one more very thin layer of the
> onion being pulled away, the laws barring incest and polygamy will also
> be obsolete.
>
> Bill Putney
> (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
> address with "x")
>

All that's needed there is for Utah to annex the 49 states

"Brandon Sommerville" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 06:42:14 -0400, Bill Putney <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> >Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> >>
> >> ...For example, there's still penty of anti-homosexual sex (ie: sodomy) laws on
> >> plenty of
> >> state laws. However unless you knew about the recent Supreme Court
> >> ruling on the Texas sodomy thing, you wouldn't know that now all of these
> >> gay sex laws are essentially illegal, unenforceable, unprosecutable.
> >>
> >> Ted
> >
> >...and if the same wonderful human "logic" and "wisdom" continue to be
> >applied by our lawyer friends, with one more very thin layer of the
> >onion being pulled away, the laws barring incest and polygamy will also
> >be obsolete.
>
> As long as the relationship is between consenting adults, who cares
> what goes on?

Boy is that ever a loaded question. Who cares? Millions of nosey busy-body right wing
cretins; most of whom haven't had a satisfactory sexual relationship in their entire
lives....

Let me spell it out for you.

Someone cross posted,
everyone else replied (crossposting) .. including you...
you started being insulting,
I replied..

now, shall we can it, or wait until someone mentions Hitler ?

Dave Milne, Scotland
'99 TJ 4.0 Sahara

"Mind Melt" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
: On Sun, 06 Jul 2003 21:27:50 GMT, "Dave Milne"
<jeep@_nospam_milne.info>wrote:
:
: >Hey, you are the one calling yourself "mind melt"...
:
: And your point? (besides the one on your head)

"Dave Milne" <jeep@_nospam_milne.info> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Let me spell it out for you.
>
> Someone cross posted,
> everyone else replied (crossposting) .. including you...
> you started being insulting,
> I replied..
>
> now, shall we can it, or wait until someone mentions Hitler ?
>
> Dave Milne, Scotland
> '99 TJ 4.0 Sahara
>
> "Mind Melt" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> : On Sun, 06 Jul 2003 21:27:50 GMT, "Dave Milne"
> <jeep@_nospam_milne.info>wrote:
> :
> : >Hey, you are the one calling yourself "mind melt"...
> :
> : And your point? (besides the one on your head)


try Braille

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 18:06:32 GMT, "Dave Milne" <jeep@_nospam_milne.info>wrote:

>Let me spell it out for you.

Don't bother.

>Someone cross posted,
>everyone else replied (crossposting) .. including you...
>you started being insulting,
>I replied..

Hurt your feelings did I laddie ?

>now, shall we can it, or wait until someone mentions Hitler ?

You just did.

>Dave Milne, Scotland
>'99 TJ 4.0 Sahara
>

I think we'll have to settle for an amicable disagreement since its come
down to a fairly clear cut belief of facts ! I do think Sun and Netscape
have produced superior products, but thanks for debating !

Dave Milne, Scotland
'99 TJ 4.0 Sahara

"DTJ" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
: On Sun, 06 Jul 2003 10:06:00 GMT, "Dave Milne"
: <jeep@_nospam_milne.info> wrote:
:
: >Yes, yes and I have Linux on this machine as well, and I use AIX at work.
I
: >meant real alternatives on a Desktop. Actually, if Apple had half a brain
: >they would licence their O/S for intel - but then that's why Windows
became
: >so popular isn't it ? Again you are missing the point about "publishing
the
: >Application Programmers Interface so that other vendors can write
software
: >for the Operating System". So I can *choose* other vendors for my
programs
: >on the Microsoft O/S.
:
: No, I don't believe I am missing the point. I simply disagree with
: the opinion that Microsoft has APIs that are not available to other
: companies. I don't know how much you know about programming Windows,
: but I can assure you it is highly unlikely that they have these APIs,
: and even more unlikely that other companies can not use them. I
: firmly believe that if there were any truth to this opinion, that it
: would not matter, as any company that has halfway decent programmers
: would test their product before shipping.
:
: Further, MS does publish their APIs, and anyone can use them. Even if
: Office could take advantage of some "hidden" APIs, that does not
: prevent any company from duplicating the functionality of Office.
:
: My opinion is simply that this whole argument is bull****, and that
: companies like Netscape, Corel, Sun and others would prefer to fight
: MS in the courts as opposed to fighting them with quality software.
:
: As these are opinions, I could be wrong, but I don't see how anyone
: can convince me otherwise unless they actually point to evidence that
: is not based on what a sleeping judge found, or what their competitors
: claim.
:
: Thanks for debating though. I do find it intellectually stimulating
: to do this, whether I am right or wrong.

Not in some of the licenses I've seen.

Dave Milne, Scotland
'99 TJ 4.0 Sahara

"Lon Stowell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:sAiOa.235$ye4.672@sccrnsc01...
: It is also perfectly legal for someone else to reverse engineer
: the api and document it for private or public consumption.

Licenses are not involved. There IS no relationship between
the reverse engineered product and the new instance. For
example, when Microsoft and 3COM reverse engineered the
IBM PC Networking that became Windows for Workgroups.


Dave Milne wrote:
> Not in some of the licenses I've seen.
>
> Dave Milne, Scotland
> '99 TJ 4.0 Sahara
>
> "Lon Stowell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:sAiOa.235$ye4.672@sccrnsc01...
> : It is also perfectly legal for someone else to reverse engineer
> : the api and document it for private or public consumption.
>
>

Here' the Sun Java license ...

"Unless enforcement is prohibited by applicable law, you may not modify,
decompile, or reverse engineer Software".

The Borland C++ one ...

"You acknowledge that the Software in source code form remains a
confidential trade secret of Borland and/or its suppliers and therefore you
agree not to modify the Software or attempt to reverse engineer, decompile,
or disassemble the Software, except and only to the extent that such
activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this
limitation."

And the Netscape one

"You may not modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software
or in any way ascertain, decipher, or obtain the communications protocol for
accessing the Service."

Whether they are enforceable is a different story of course.


Dave Milne, Scotland
'99 TJ 4.0 Sahara

"Lon Stowell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:9FjOa.128163$R73.15481@sccrnsc04...
: Licenses are not involved. There IS no relationship between
: the reverse engineered product and the new instance. For
: example, when Microsoft and 3COM reverse engineered the
: IBM PC Networking that became Windows for Workgroups.
:
:
: Dave Milne wrote:
: > Not in some of the licenses I've seen.
: >
: > Dave Milne, Scotland
: > '99 TJ 4.0 Sahara
: >
: > "Lon Stowell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
: > news:sAiOa.235$ye4.672@sccrnsc01...
: > : It is also perfectly legal for someone else to reverse engineer
: > : the api and document it for private or public consumption.
: >
: >
:

That's a lie. Practically all of the code for Windows for Warehouses
originated in-house, at Redmond, WA. I was there. IBM couldn't write a
networking protocol to save their lives. With regard to DLC, the part that
IBM was responsible for, "I could puke a better protocol." (Quote from
Henry Sanders, Microsoft NT networking group, circa 1995.) Furthermore,
there was no need to ""reverse engineer" any IBM code, if we used it at all.
Anything we got from IBM was obtained fair and square through code sharing
agreements that were part of our collaboration on OS2. Furthermore, 3COM's
contribution to WFW was miniscule, infinitesimal even.

Earle

"Lon Stowell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:9FjOa.128163$R73.15481@sccrnsc04...
> Licenses are not involved. There IS no relationship between
> the reverse engineered product and the new instance. For
> example, when Microsoft and 3COM reverse engineered the
> IBM PC Networking that became Windows for Workgroups.
>
>
> Dave Milne wrote:
> > Not in some of the licenses I've seen.
> >
> > Dave Milne, Scotland
> > '99 TJ 4.0 Sahara
> >
> > "Lon Stowell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:sAiOa.235$ye4.672@sccrnsc01...
> > : It is also perfectly legal for someone else to reverse engineer
> > : the api and document it for private or public consumption.
> >
> >
>

Dave Milne wrote:
> Here' the Sun Java license ...
>
> "Unless enforcement is prohibited by applicable law, you may not modify,
> decompile, or reverse engineer Software".


I can put tags on mattresses that say do not remove under
penalty of fine, yet folks can and do remove the license.
You just can't call the result Java IF your intent is to
reproduce the function of the underlying code, as opposed
to merely discovering the interface.

In other words, that is a statement of position, not a legally
binding document or contract between two agreeing parties.

> Whether they are enforceable is a different story of course.

Exactly.

Earle Horton wrote:

> That's a lie. Practically all of the code for Windows for Warehouses
> originated in-house, at Redmond, WA. I was there. IBM couldn't write a
> networking protocol to save their lives. With regard to DLC, the part that
> IBM was responsible for, "I could puke a better protocol." (Quote from
> Henry Sanders, Microsoft NT networking group, circa 1995.) Furthermore,
> there was no need to ""reverse engineer" any IBM code, if we used it at all.
> Anything we got from IBM was obtained fair and square through code sharing
> agreements that were part of our collaboration on OS2. Furthermore, 3COM's
> contribution to WFW was miniscule, infinitesimal even.

A bit revisionist not to give IBM PC LAN credit for NetBIOS, SMB,
NetBUI, etc.? And to ignore OS2/EE as a networking technology
that could connect PC's to PC's, PC's to mainframes as secondary
nodes, PC's to mainframes as peer nodes, etc. Or the massive
SNA and pre-SNA networks that predated all of this? As for the
3COM connection, a few ex-managers at 3COM might have a different
view as well. As for using an NT networking Microsoft person as
any sort of judge of network protocols, perhaps you should stick
to jeeps.

Just shows you that people got fed up debating the relationship between a
certain brand of off-road vehicle and a certain type of off-road woolly
creature and now prefer to debate other relationships...


DAS
--
---
NB: To reply directly replace "nospam" with "schmetterling"
---
"John Hinckley" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:wJiOa.2349$7e.2018@fed1read07...
>
> "Bill Putney" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> > Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> > >
> > > ...For example, there's still penty of anti-homosexual sex (ie:
sodomy) laws on
> > > plenty of
> > > state laws. However unless you knew about the recent Supreme Court
> > > ruling on the Texas sodomy thing, you wouldn't know that now all of
these
> > > gay sex laws are essentially illegal, unenforceable, unprosecutable.
> > >
> > > Ted
> >
> > ...and if the same wonderful human "logic" and "wisdom" continue to be
> > applied by our lawyer friends, with one more very thin layer of the
> > onion being pulled away, the laws barring incest and polygamy will also
> > be obsolete.
> >
> > Bill Putney
> > (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
> > address with "x")
> >
>
> All that's needed there is for Utah to annex the 49 states
>
>

"Lon Stowell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
newsjlOa.1722$ye4.3297@sccrnsc01...
> Earle Horton wrote:
>
> > That's a lie. Practically all of the code for Windows for Warehouses
> > originated in-house, at Redmond, WA. I was there. IBM couldn't write a
> > networking protocol to save their lives. With regard to DLC, the part
> > that IBM was responsible for, "I could puke a better protocol." (Quote
> > from Henry Sanders, Microsoft NT networking group, circa 1995.)
> > Furthermore, there was no need to ""reverse engineer" any IBM code,
> > if we used it at all. Anything we got from IBM was obtained fair and
> > square through code sharing agreements that were part of our
> > collaboration on OS2. Furthermore, 3COM's contribution to WFW
> > was miniscule, infinitesimal even.
>
> A bit revisionist not to give IBM PC LAN credit for NetBIOS, SMB,
> NetBUI, etc.? And to ignore OS2/EE as a networking technology
> that could connect PC's to PC's, PC's to mainframes as secondary
> nodes, PC's to mainframes as peer nodes, etc. Or the massive
> SNA and pre-SNA networks that predated all of this? As for the
> 3COM connection, a few ex-managers at 3COM might have a different
> view as well. As for using an NT networking Microsoft person as
> any sort of judge of network protocols, perhaps you should stick
> to jeeps.
>
IBM PC LAN was a collaborative effort between IBM and Microsoft, as was
PC/MSDOS. We called it MSNET, and used it for years in house. We had DOS
based servers and clients deployed everywhere. OS2 was also a collaborative
effort. The claim that Microsoft had to reverse engineer any of this, when
we had full source code access to it and in fact wrote most of it under
contract to IBM, is ridiculous. Did you ever hear of LAN Manager 2.1? This
was an incredibly robust network system where we did everything right, and
everything wrong. It ran on OS2 1.3, had good performance and very very few
bugs. (We never made that mistake again...) Reviewers loved it; customers
hated it. Likely causes were no interoperativity with Novell, and no peer
server option. OS2 at the time didn't run Windows programs (I might know
something about this...) and everybody wanted to run Windows programs.

Windows for Workgroups consisted almost entirely of LAN Manager 2.1 code,
ported to the Windows 3.11 kernel environment. To call it
reverse-engineered PC LAN is misinformed, to be kind. IBM hired Microsoft
to write software for them. That was the relationship. As part of the
agreement, we got certain rights to use the code. Usually, we could ship
code to IBM, they would hack "features" into it, and Microsoft engineers
would get stuck fixing the resulting bugs. Your 3COM buddies as a rule were
just as bad.

3COM engineers may have contributed some things to LAN Manager and WFW. In
fact I think that they might have released a 3COM-labelled version of LAN
Manager to a few clients. As a rule however, they were inept programmers
and most of their contribution consisted of their marketing people demanding
"features" that even feature-hungry Microsoft program managers couldn't see
any purpose in. They were better at designing network interfaces that used
99% of the host computer's CPU capacity, like the 3C509 for example.

Ironically, the most successful part of Windows for Workgroups was a little
program I wrote called Vshare. It let Office applications share files
without loading a TSR program, thus freeing up 30k of conventional memory.
The program managers got real excited about it. They were less excited
trying to push WFW to entrenched DOS/Windows/Netware customers.

Earle

In that case, bring it on ...



"Dave Milne" <jeep@_nospam_milne.info> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> He leases...
>
> --
> Dave Milne, Scotland
> '99 TJ 4.0 Sahara
>
> "Jeff Strickland" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> : > Why not? Those jacked-up, huge-tired vehicles are the best and
funniest
> : jokes
> : > on the road!
> : >
> : > (And why is it the big, tough SUVs always slow down and creep over
> : railroad
> : > crossings and speed bumps that cars take with ease?)
> :
> :
> : ALWAYS slow down? You obviously haven't got a clue, or you haven't
> followed
> : me.
> :
> : I'll gladly race you for Pink Slips, but I get to pick the course. Bring
> : that little-tired piece of crap that you call a car, and I'll bring my
> Jeep.
> : On second thought, I don't want anything you would drive, especially
after
> : you used it to try and keep up.
> :
> :
>
>

in light of the recent supreme court decision,
can't we all just love one another?