FewClues, are the statements your paraphrasing from the EULA specific to the Beta version or is that supposed to repersent the EULA that will find its way into the final release?

That's stolen from Sun's Project Looking Glass for Solaris and Linux systems, first released I-don't-know-how-many months (years?) ago.... Shame on you damn MS!!!!

No there is a section just for the beta saying they are harmless if you blow up a production network using beta, and that its not to be used on production machines.

This is the NEW EULA from Microsoft and I wouldn't be too surprised if recently purchased copies of XP don't contain it. They have put the Ad Ware onto XP although the program name is a tad different. In XP they give you 24 days to rectify (purchase) the problem before erasing your machine.

It wouldn't surprise me to see the next EULA say that you relinquish all of your personal rights to Microsoft.

I need to remaster Knoppix, or better yet make a Gentoo LiveCD (its pretty much ideal for these kind of things).

Look for pysol. Its got ALOT of solitare games, for free!

Well if you were as old as dirt (I am) you would remember that MS came onto the scene making a DOS for IBM and then stole it from them. The only thing original on MS are the new names they give to the software that they acquire (some legally). I often wonder what that mountain of programmers do - they can't all be reverse engineering software.

I downloaded Looking Glass and then http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/5476
Kororaa when it published. Looking Glass never ran right on my 64bit machine - but it ran better than Aero Graphics does :) because it at least recognized my graphics card and audio cards.

I really think that SLED has it right with their application of Xgl. :twocents:

MS is always a step behind. Aero-style looks have been standard for ages in DEs (which is what Windows is) for ages, along with many of the basic WMs.

Linux has it when it comes to customizable looks. Mac is getting there, and Windows is just trying to make itself look better, without any real improvements.

As for that army of programmers: No, they are used to hack new features into old software. They just steal general ideas from real programmers.

Uh, no, Microsoft did not "make" DOS. They bought the rights to it from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for $50,000 in 1980 (or '81), after already having made a deal with IBM which included a clause allowing Microsoft to continue to charge licensing fees.

Microsoft didn't steal anything from IBM. All of their dealings (at the time) were legitimate. IBM were of the opinion that all the real money was in the hardware and that the software was of no financial consequence. As a result, their contracts explicitly allowed Microsoft to publically market DOS.

And they have been hacking it into a "new" version ever since.

They are as capable of making an OS as I am.

Even less so.

They had to hire Dave Cutler (one of the guys who developed VMS for Digital) to write NT for them. Apparently, there are many "similarities" in VMS and NT source code.

In fairness, much of Vista has been re-written, but I'm willing to bet that much of it is based on BSD sources (for which Microsoft has been a long time license holder).

I've even read speculation that the version of Windows which will follow Vista is going to be 100% Unix based.

and 0% compatable. If Windows survives long enough for another release (that will be when, 2030?), then I have a feeling that it may actually start to turn into a decent OS, IF they get off their lazy asses and reprogram the whole thing FROM SCRATCH. Anything short will just be another abimination of code.

The fact MS has admited to not knowing how their own network protocol works (how do you code something without knowing how it works? This doesn't make sense...), and iirc, they aren't sure how NTFS works fully, either, makes one wonder if they know ANYTHING about the inner workings of their OS (I will put money down the kernel they run under has the original comments in it from the old DOS OS, with files just added into the MAKEFILE to "make it work").

I don't think MS has ever produced an OS that is 100% their own (unlike BSD/Linux/Unix), nor do I think they will ever simply because they look more at profit margins then at the fact that not only are they infamous for piss-poor security, but the fact that in every aspect of computing, they are always 2nd rate (we're not taking hardware into this. Alot of those issues are because of MS being a greedy street-walker, and not problems with compatablity directly).

Aero graphics is a good example: Mac, BSD, and Linux have all had this capability for ages now, and when MS releases it, Linux at least is going into XGL, which promises to make Windows look like a script kiddie's weekend project in the eye-candy department.

Another is their supposed "admin" user now. From what I have heard, they are SO strict, running as anything other then the admin is pretty much pointless.

Plus they still use a damnable page file for their swap space. Why use a fs made for one task, and force it to do another? We don't in Linux (ext2/3 excluded: It is so old and has such a following, plus it is tweakable), but instead we have half a dozen or more good FS we can set to diffrent partitions to increase performance, stability, and reduce memory loss.

You can also get into long, drawn out arguements over how "user friendly" it is. People who know nothing of computers may like wizards and the like, but I'll be damned if popping into a file directly with vim, editing what needs to be edited, and [SHIFT + zz] to save/quit isn't a hell of alot faster then "Ok, this wizard will..." (continue through a pointless paragraph) "This screen allows you to..." (I won't annoy the reader here further).



[/rant]

If you feel like ranting, MS gives you plenty of targets and more then enough fuel to run for a loooong time.

I agree with your rant, except I'd hardly call Linux "100% Torvalds own" or who ever you attribute it to. I think the same could be said of BSD as well, it to is based of Unix. Unix on the other hand is as close as it gets I suppose to 100% original.

True, but I ment this in a sense that MS Windows I think is more or less either outsourced to other programmers (who sign a deal that they won't spill the beans on what they did) to do the hard work, or is stolen from other OSs. Linux is currently pretty much self-maintained so to speak, as is BSD.

You're right, Unix is as close to 100% its own as anything gets, but you run into other arguments as to whether any OS is its own since so many share features.

In some cases, you'r looking at the old "chicken or the egg" bit: Which came first, and how do we know it was first?

But yeah, I think I made my point. The origins may be from something else, but it is itself instead of a mile long list of outsourced projects that were scrapped together into something that might work.

This does get into problems with Linux being OSS and Windows being proprietary, but since WIndows is trying to compete with Linux (and losing far as I am concerned), I feel treating them as being on the same level is ok.

Linux was written FROM SCRATCH by Linus and thousands of others. Precisely NONE of the code comes from AT&T Unix or BSD Unix. This has even been proven in court with that whole SCO v IBM fiasco.

As for Free/Open/NetBSD - They were also written from scratch to get away from issues with proprietary code.

They may look & feel like old school Unix, but that is because they are designed that way. And they are all written to the same standards.

Linux was written when Linus was working with Manix (sp?), and there could be arguments over whether the code of the latter influenced the former. While the code may be diffrent, the way it works may be the same, in which case it would be fair to say its 50/50:

Linus wrote the code better, but got the idea from somewhere else.

If nothing else, you got to give Microsoft credit on there marketing abilities, which is something most other OS's lack or don't have the $$$$. But other than that... Oh yeah, great FUD, lying, stealing, cheating... I guess they're capable of a lot more than I thought ;)