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I haven't had it happen, but maybe this is what you're looking for?

Unix was killed by the high price of licenses ...

... With the license for Windows NT ...

Interestingly, the tide is turning again. Despite the ongoing anti-competitive activities, people realize that they've been burnt by MS, even if only as a result shelling out for software assurance. Though many have a longer more serious list of grievances and disappointments. With all other options gone, that basically leaves only 'Linux'. As a result we are now seeing that sales of Linux servers have shown 15 consecutive quarters of growth. That's sales not general market share which would also include Linux servers installed over other operating systems.

The Windows Trojan/Erazer-A Trojan looks at default folders for downloading MP3, AVI, MPEG, WMV, Gif, Zip graphic and video files, and wipes anything it finds with these extensions in the target locations.

The assumption is that because the Trojan is only deleting certain file types in specific download directories used by P2P programs -- one of the main sources of inadvertent malware infection -- it is attempting to protect those it manages to infect. [emph mine]

Word is, he's not after money, just wants Google to prohibit illegal pornography (which they do, it's in every Google TOS). Ironically, I pulled that link from Google News. Also ironically, while he may not have grounds to sue Google, Google's image has already taken some damage from this lawsuit and by the time their name is cleared, the media and public may have labelled Google evil and lost interest in the story. If Google loses profit because of this, they may have grounds to sue him.

"Russian spammer found beaten to death"
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2140340/russian- spammer-murdered

Police Chief: OK, let's go check out the usual suspects...
Detective: Uh, all one bazillion of 'em?

try http://forums.vnunet.com/thread.jsp?forum=10&threa d=80643&message=556473

Someone mod parent down. Its pure fantasy and a troll.

Please note: the above sentance was not a quote from the parent of this post, I just happen to have used the same wording because I have the same feelings.

"Microsoft 'has become known for' providing timely patches for their software like no-one else. "

Microsoft's patches are coming quicker than they used to, which is probably why more of them seem to be causing problems.

Timely patches like no-one else? I don't think so. I know Microsoft has left critical flaws unpatched for longer than others...

"I can't say I ever noticed a patch screwing up a machine."

You and me are a pretty small percentage of the world's Windows users, so I don't think it really matters. Here are a few articles pointing to problems with Microsoft's patches:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2154155/users-fe el-pain-latest
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingn ews.jhtml?articleId=185302749
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=180202426
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/17/ms_patch_g litch/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/12/ms_pulls_s ecurity_patch/
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=168600620
http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_79 92.php/Faulty_Microsoft_patches_highlight_quality_ concerns
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5648595.html
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNCID=43 &CIaNID=18362

From the article
"China's new rules also prohibit use of email to discuss certain vaguely defined subjects related to 'network security' and ' information security', "

From the regulation that the article links to
taking advantage of emails to engage in activities which are detrimental to network and information security is strictly prohibited in accordance with related laws.

There is a big difference between "engaging in activities that are detrimental to information security" and "discussing information security"

But with a title like "China Outlaws Outlook" are you really surprised that they are sensationalizing it.

That's strange... a country putting it's (and it's citizens) own interests before the ideals of a free market economy. In most western countries we are trying hard to live up to the "ideal" of a completely unregulated free market, where costs & profits dictate all corporate actions, with the predictable result that any possible opportunity to send work to a country with lower labour costs is taken advantage of. In the long run it is draining wealth from the western economies to the developing economies, with the owners of the corporate world skimming a healthy percentage off the top.

China is taking the best of both worlds... they are only taking the parts of the market system that help them (ie. taking on outsourced work) but carefully controlling the reverse direction. Another example: their government has delayed introduction of WCDMA 3G mobile technologies so as to give local companies a chance to develop a competing standard, thus delaying the chance for established European and US equipment manufacturers to gain a foothold.

If it weren't for the lack of personal freedoms afforded by the Chinese government you'd almost feel jealous of a population that has a government looking out for them like that.

The full document can be got here in PDF format.

Instead of crying over the stolen $612.5M, RIM should have pro-actively spent a small fraction of that sum to make the patent system fair in the US. Instead, they allowed the Patent Cartel to fund this monster of a legal system, which of course rewards its creators.

Software Idea Patents are a form of legalized extortion encouraged by the US government. It was put in place in order to protect monopolies like Microsoft, who has recently threatened to sue users and developers of open-source software, including Linux. No wonder the US government intervened on behalf of Microsoft in its European anti-trust case -- Microsoft and the Patent Mafia has Uncle Sam in their pocket. Too bad Europe is heading there too.

That is, how much per square inch, single layer? And just how many layers does this employ?

Here's a brilliant idea: Maybe somewhere in the summary, Slashdot could include an easy way to get more information about the story... say, with a hyperlink to a webpage. Then people would have an easy way to find answers to questions they may have that aren't covered by the one paragraph summary. For instance, people could then read the news article that mentions that "In this demonstration there were over 1.3 million bits per data page, and 320 data pages spaced 0.067 degrees apart were stored in the same volume of material.".

Considering that in this article from the same source Hitachi set a record for hard drives with a density of 230 GB with its perpendicular HD system, I'm going to assume that 515Gb isn't even in the running. So we can assume that Gigabits was a misprint on their part.

"The new drives are capable of 230GB per inch squared, compact enough to build a 20GB mini iPod or a terabyte 3.5 inch drive."

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2127087/hitachi- breaks-hard-drive-record

50 hours
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005Aug/bga20050 810031766.htm

Second gamer dies after massive binge
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2120472/second-g amer-dies-massive-binge

etc.etc.

"Open source becomes successful when major industrial corporations invest heavily in that open source product,"

"Major industrial corporations invest heavily in Open source when that open source product becomes successful"

..is that microsoft might not have your security in mind.

source : http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2150555/microsof t-teaching-police-hack

Microsoft may begin training the police in ways to break the encryption built into its forthcoming Vista operating system.

Demand for Linux servers reaches record levels VnuNet. The same study. Is Slashdot biased to windows??

Hi, if you are still there, it's this one:

Evesham eBox2. Together with a 37" hd LCD (with DVI of course). Very happy with it. Just works beautifully out of the box.

Civil rights are not prevented in any way by gun control (that is a very good thing and we want it. Don't you dare criticise our right not to get shot).

I take it that The main story of today didn't happen then?

CCTV has reduced crime a lot, and we don't like crime. It doesn't affect our civil rights at all.

Well at least some of the ones that abuse it get jailed

ID cards do not affect civil rights either at all.

Of course not. They are little pieces of plastic. The things that do affect civil rights are what happens when the massive central database is abused, by insiders or outsiders, or even sold off to dodgy criminals

Of course once you are required to carry them arround it will be easier to find out who is at a peaceful demonstration and quietly arrest them a few weeks later

America's problems are much worse, and in fact the UK is ahead of America in civil rights and such. We are just both behind places like Sweden.

Well Duh

Labour are not fascist. Conservatives are not for civil liberties either; they are just not against them.

Torys are against things that Labour are for. Labour are for Spin, PR, the credit economy, "Being seen to do something", Pleasing George, Pleasing Europe, or just Pleasing campaign contributers

I think Americas problems are actually much worse than the UKs, and we are certainally not doing worse things. You are just blind of the problems of America and uninformed about the problems of the UK if you think that.

Yup. America has a lot of problems, however it seems you're blind to the UK's problems, including unprecedent consumer debt, overvalued housing market, london-centric population, shaky stock market, collapsing pensions etc.

Between this article and previous articles concerning the locking of Wikipedia pages, I can't help but wonder if what is happening amounts to some kind of evolution. Depending on how Wiki solves this, what we may see is the system evolving to include some form of the old fashioned, but sometimes maligned model of peer review. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is an interesting process to watch -- especially for somebody (like me) who thinks peer review is good thing.

Pro prio: He has done a remarkable job with Apple. From securing the first steps of Maslow, to the rocket Apple is destined to be for the next five years.

Pro secundo: He has won every victory, fighting honestly with QUALITY as the preferred weapon. Pixar never had a "B Team". People invest in Apple because of innovation and quality. People invest in Dell because they are slightly better than other PC distributors when it comes to logistics.

Pro tertio: Steve Jobs ultimate motive is to bring Microsoft to its knees. And he will do that. And he will be using innovation and quality - to prove his point.

From "Pirates of Silicon Valley":

Steve Jobs: We're better than you are! We have better stuff.
Bill Gates: You don't get it, Steve. That doesn't matter!

Oh yes. Guess what. It does matter. And it will bring down the Microsoft empire.

But to bring down Bill Gates - the most skillfull businessman alive - you will have to be outstanding. There are no shortcuts. No quick deals. You will have to be or become smarter, better, more profitable, eventually bigger and in the end richer than Bill Gates. Take away the reason for buying Microsoft products.

Myself, I think the turning point was when Steve Jobs demoed his NeXT, proud as a peacock, showing Illustrator, Framemaker and other major apps. A journalist later asked Bill Gates if Microsoft would develop software for the NeXT and Bill Gates stated Develop for it? I'll piss on it.

Those seven words, that single quote - my friends - is the essence of how our work, our businesses and tools will develop for the next 20 years.

We do live in interesting times. I enjoy every moment.

Strictly speaking, people aren't complaining about extension elements. They're complaining about broken namespace support and unnamespaced extension elements amongst other things. You don't know what you're talking about.

Sorry, that's a quote directly from the article in the submission.

Speaking of quotes, "You don't know what you're talking about."

Jobs needs to abandon proprietary hardware once and for all...Until he does that, he can expect to remain on the fringe irrespective of anything else he might do.

Fringe? Did you really say "... he can expect to remain on the fringe ..."

• HTTP inventor endorses Safari browser
• Tim Berners Lee invents first web apps and server on a NeXT computer
• Apple stock trading at $74 and change as of writing this
• More than 10 million iPods sold
• Half way through 2005 500 million songs sold via iTunes

All of which is really consistent with your point "...Apple are still going to remain largely irrelevant."

If you call those achievemens 'largely irrelevant' and 'fringe' I'd love to see your resume!

More then days, try a week.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2147967/windows- patch-critical-wmf-hole

Windows .wmf patch promised for next week
"Extremely critical" vulnerability to remain unpatched for another week
Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com 04 Jan 2006

Microsoft will issue patch for a widely abused security vulnerability in the Windows operating system next Tuesday as part of its monthly "patch Tuesday" security update cycle, the company said in an update of the security advisory about the flaw.

I may be a bit paranoid but I'd like to turn off images and video for a few days until this ".wmf" issue is resolved.

".wma" and ".wmv" file extensions seem closer to the ".wmf" extension than ".jpg" or ".tif" extensions, so they may also be loaded by programs that open ".wmf" files only to read the internal label and execute the malicious code.

I unchecked the box called "load images" in Firefox, but animated web sites still come up. So I reinstalled Firefox (also deleting the directory) to try to return to Firefox's original default settings, but my settings were still active. Apparently, Firefox saves personal settings in the registry even after it is uninstalled.

Security web sites seem to be of little help:

Secunia, Kaspersky strongly caution against opening any untrusted *.wmf files
http://secunia.com/advisories/18255/
http://www.viruslist.com/en/alerts?alertid=1767016 69

VNUNet.com says Firefox will first ask the user before opening the file.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2147909/hackers- attack-zero-day-windows

Pete Lindstrom, research director for Spire Security LLC, said,
"There's no such thing as 'extremely critical' when user interaction is required. [...] That's just silly."

Lisa Vaas of eweek.com says "Google had no immediate comment. To avoid the problem, security experts suggest disabling the feature's indexing of media files, or to remove Google Desktop altogether."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1906177,00.as p

Jay Wrolstad at CIO-Today says, "Current exploits use the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to attack any application that can handle Windows Metafiles. Disabling the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will not eliminate the risk as the flaw exists in the Windows Graphical Device Interface library".
http://www.cio-today.com/news/Flaw-Detected-in-Win dows-Metafile/story.xhtml?story_id=131004IKPNAU

Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt Software.
"There is no user interaction required," he wrote in an e-mail exchange. "You hit the Web site, you get hit immediately. No prompts, nothing."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1906489,00.as p

Courtesy of Google News.

IE on the Mac: Bubbye
CNET News.com- Dec 19, 2005
News on Monday that Microsoft plans to discontinue support and development of its Internet Explorer Web browser on the Macintosh hardly came as a surprise.
MS pulls plug on Mac IE Register
Microsoft Drops Support for Mac IE TechNewsWorld
VNUNet.com- InformationWeek- Techtree.com- ZDNet UK- all 112 related

This seems to be very true. HP even made a request that the Blu-ray group include iHD (microsoft's non java interactivity "language") support. However, iHD isn't even "Tested". I can't find any information on it. Compare this with java with has many years of being tried and tested. Also consider the fact that either way, Blu-Ray or HD DVD implementors will have to pay MS for the VC-1 license.

It almost seems as if MS is "convincing" HP to make this move. I don't know if it has anything to do with java itself since MS paid sun $2 billion but more of a "all media technology must only work well on windows" type of thing.

http://www.vnunet.com/networkitweek/news/2052597/s olaris-calls-hotmail-shots-microsoft
(to verify parent's link)

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2147050/icann-go es-floppy-porn-domain

The article talk about the .xxx domain being dropped from the agenda... and I quote "EU commissioner Viviane Reding is said to have called the head of ICANN Paul Twomey and threatened to withdraw all the EU's representatives unless the issue was pulled."

Looks like it was the EU's fault, not the typical scapegoat "various Christian extremist groups"

-everphilski-

This is true, yet Microsoft instead of fixing the bugs decides to jump in an design their own anti-virus. I wonder if some of the virus exploits are just impossible to properly close off and still allow the system to function as the user intends. Maybe the anti-virus anti-spam anti-adware layers are needed just to decipher what a user's program is allowd to do an an unwanted program might try to do.

This move has put Microsoft back in the race in Massachusetts. They were previously threatening to disqualify MS due to not supporting any standards.

In the Windows world, one doesn't get the alpha or beta patches, just the blessed finished product

yeah, right!
i won't even mention IE's security holes for the last 8 or so years (active x, ...) or outlook's bad record of keeping spam from executing malicious code (mostly through the IE engine).

but boldly stating how much due diligence is exacted upon the microsoft patches before final release is ridiculous in face of them frequently backfiring and leaving old or new vulnerabilities in their wake:

http://www.hideaway.net/home/public_html/article.p hp?story=20020924094345962
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/08/HNhacker sjump_1.html
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1753511,00.as p
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2120864/doubts-r aised-microsoft-patches

jethr0

The internet has proven that pay services don't work if the service was free initially.

Ah, that explains why the iTunes Music Store has failed so miserably.

Funny, your post reminds me of something too...

Oh yes, that's right, we can defeat any CD DRM with a piece of sticky tape too!.

Oh, how technology has progessed, huh? :P

The subject of Critical Mass for Firefox is an interesting one; we can perhaps estimate when it will arrive by looking at the first browser war. The start of the "Viewable With Any Browser" campaign is a good indication of when IE began reaching critical mass, so sometime between the release of IE 3.0 in 1996 and 4.0 in 1997. Similar to today, the vast majority of the market share was divided between just two browsers, so let's just look at the ratio of the top two browsers to one another. When IE 4.0 was released it was 72% NN and 18% IE, a 4:1 ratio. We can take this as the upper limit to critical mass.

Assuming that trends continue as they have (where IE declines are translated almost exclusively into FF gains), the 4:1 ratio will be reached when FF rises to 19% and IE slips to 76%. This has already happened in some countries (e.g. Germany) and is not far off for the U.S. (OneStat reports 81% IE and 14% FF) or Europe as a whole (XiTi reported 15% FF in September). The only question will be how long it takes...

We can estimate that as follows. To rise to 19%, FF needs to increase by about a third in the U.S. If that's proportional to overall FF downloads, the counter needs to reach ~133 M. In the 25 days since it hit 100M, there have been 5M more downloads (~200K/day). Doing the math, that means that critical mass will be reached no later than early April, 2006.

No surprise then that M$ had to uncouple IE7 from Vista; the estimated date for IE7's release is December 2005 with Vista not for a year after that. Yet I think IE7 is going to have a hard time slowing FF down since FF 1.5 is due out in December too :)

The bug related to a "rare conjunction" of circumstances "whereby v4.02 failed to properly compensate for an (here it comes, ed.) unusual memory allocation error generated by a company's mail server and consequently appended a partial message to another email.

"Neither the original message or the appended partial message were ever exposed outside the company's firewall and the bug did not generate any external risk. Customers using v4.02 may obtain this fix from RIM or install v4.03."

Source:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2144770/bbc-squa shes-blackberry

and for additional info another link, since I was googling (googelen is an official dutch word now by the way):

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390203 75,39233646,00.htm

Funny that, not a Java problem. But you might be right in assuming they use Java for much else. Of course it could have been in a JNI (Java Native Interface) implementation - if you are going to use .dll's you are prone to use unsafe C and C++ as well. Note that Java just as easy talks to COM and .NET if necessary. So it might not be easy to fix by "just using java" I admit.

Dell offers Linux laptop in France
Features in the last RC
Reviews of 2005: Playreaction vnunet
Distrowatch

Is the closed source code of Windows preventing us from actively defending our systems?

Does this question really need to be asked any longer?

Has this story teleported us all back to the year 2000? Hit the reset button? Is Slashdot's new motto "No hugging, no learning"?

b) The US Navy is running an unsecurable OS for the most advanced surface ships in the world - with nuclear reactors to boot.

I thought this was common knowledge. I didn't really expect a "pro-business" administration to do anything about it, did you? It's actually one of the few things that makes the rest of us feel safer.

Britain has the same problem, by the way:

The Royal Navy's new, state-of-the-art destroyer has been fitted with combat management software that can be hacked into, crashes easily and is vulnerable to viruses, according to one of the system's designers who was fired after raising his concerns. ... he told Channel 4 news that "the use of Windows For Warships puts the ship and her crew at risk, and the defence of the realm".

There are also plans to install a similar Microsoft Windows-based computerised command system on Britain's nuclear submarines. Wilson said: "It is inconceivable that we could allow the possible accidental release of nuclear missiles. The people who survived such an exchange, if any, would certainly regard such a thing as a crime against humanity. And I can't help feeling that even planning to deploy such systems on Windows, with its unreliability and lack of security, is itself some sort of crime in international law."

Also see The Register which quotes an upbeat Armed Forces Minister:

Fabricant had asked if there had been an external review of the Type 45 decision, and from Ingram's answer we can perhaps infer 'No'. He then asked for a cost comparison between Unix and Windows 2000 as the CMS OS, and Ingram simply said: "The cost of implementing an operating system for the Combat Management System in the Type 45 is a matter for the prime contractor, BAE Systems, and their sub-contractor. The Department does not have, or require, visibility of costs at that level of detail."

Fabricant also asked what systems had been put in place to cope with a failure, and what steps had been taken to ensure the Win2k CMS in the Type 45 was reliable. Aside from affirming that Win2k was "the lowest risk choice" and that BAE was on top of "residual risks" (Are these cookies? Spyware?), Ingram said: "The system design has built-in redundancy, with automatic, and transparent, switch-over to a back-up system if the primary system has a problem. This would provide continuity of operation and ensure that no data was lost. The system design also ensures that comprehensive hardware mechanisms will be in place to avoid any other safety or technical issues."

Perhaps the Minister can now explain why his desktop PC doesn't even run properly.

Les Hatton gives his opinion at IT Week:

... the Royal Navy is all set to go to sea with Windows on warships. Am I alone in thinking that this has to be one of the most terminally stupid IT decisions of the century?

...this was first attempted in the mid-1990s. There was a wonderful description of the then-latest generation of a US missile cruiser, the USS Yorktown, having to be frequently rebooted because its underlying network of computers running Windows NT crashed somewhat inconveniently. Apparently the design meant that critical systems such as steering could be lost in mid-battle.

So here we are again. This time the dec

"The announcement was so low-key that a Dell UK spokeswoman was unaware of the launch."

They also aren't advertising for it. In a similar article, they disucss Dell's marketing scheme for this product.

"Dell has launched a digital music player dubbed the DJ Ditty in what it calls its first "word-of-mouth" promotional campaign. The vendor announced the player in the US only with a banner on its website, and stated that it is getting the word out through employees and customer focus groups. Dell has also launched a special multimedia site targeting young buyers. The announcement was so low-key that a UK spokeswoman was unaware of the launch. "We don't get US announcements but I wouldn't be surprised if it were available here soon," she said."

This might have been a viable competitor with the iPod Shuffle, but only if people know about it.

the gif patents have expired

Foreign counterparts to U.S. Patent 4,558,302 assigned to Unisys expired worldwide in mid-2004, but IBM holds a U.S. patent on LZW that does not expire until August 2006. Or is this one of the patents that IBM has donated to the free software community?

"Siebel has needed to be picked up for some time. There are other suitors that would probably have made better sense, but it seems that Oracle is going for the number one slot no matter what the cost and aiming to become the only boy on the CRM block..."

You'd like this one...

Actually I just read Edonkey has overtaken bittorrent.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2141724/crackdow n-drives-p2p-users

Call me when hackers have got it to boot into Linux, with the PalmOS GUI. Then it'll run the SW I want, over the 3G network, with an interface useable on a tiny device. When Verizon and Sprint try to charge me for downloading songs that they have nothing to do with, I'll just stream over a secure tunnel I make to my home computer over my cablemodem. If Apple can't deliver, I'll wait for Palm to hook me up.

Does Blizzard ever plan on adding some sort of on site Item Database like Thottbot/Allakhazam/WarCry

Thottbot would be one of the largest WoW third party sites out there, but being owned by a disreputable company like IGE can't be good for the community. Even endorsing one of the third party sites that isn't run by pedophiles might be a step forward. :)

This implies that you CAN get it properly patched...

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2140780/windows- 2000-wide-open

I teach game development and do alot of 3D modelling. Alot of what you say above is false out of the box.

The state of 3D on Linux is far from sucking. Proprietary Nvidia drivers on Linux cannot be beaten, out-doing their Win32 counterparts alot of the time, even where frame rate (Q3a, Doom3, UT2004, AA) is concerned. Nvidia on Linux is an industry standard 3D animation platform in the feature film industry, for good reason. When teaching game development, if my students are sitting at machines running Nvidia binary drivers on a Linux OS, I'm having a very good day. Naturally, I'd love it if an open alternative could compete - you seem only aware of the open-source drivers, which are essentially blind to the rich talents of the Nvidia GPU. ATI's fglrx drivers are now (finally) on par with Win32 where pixel/vertex shaders (GLSL ) are concerned and close to a performance equal generally. The installation process is slightly more annoying, that is all. Many non-free distro's handle this for the user automagically (Mepis Linux comes to mind)

Secondly, binary compatibility is no more troublesome these days than it is between versions of Windows, eg running a game made for Win95 on XP - occassionally an issue. Installation of binaries can be done easily using a system like Autopackage if one doesn't want to find and or become an *.rpm/*.deb package maintainer.

Where devices are concerned, the trouble you speak of is many years in the past - udev works in userspace, and uses hotplug calls that the kernel signals whenever a device is added or removed from the kernel. Permissions, naming and control is all done in userspace.

Finally where sales of Linux games are concerned, I tend to agree that it is perhaps a little harder to market to Linux users, though from experience I am the first to buy a game that comes out for Linux. You will find though that due to existance of compatibility layers like Wine, publishers simply don't know how many Linux users are buying their games. I can account for around 14 windows games I've bought with the pure intention of playing them on Linux (for instance). Linux desktop market share is widely considered to be above or equal to that of the Apple OS. Whatever kind of market it is, it's growing.

Lastly, for the grandfather, Ryan, of Icculus is your best bet for a Linux port.

PS. Game development, as a culture, needs free software if a) small to medium sized developers are to survive and b) if micro-markets (like that of the indie-film industry) are to burgeon. Tools are increasingly expensive and publishers offset this cost with IP tradeoffs (buy outs). If I were you I'd ship the engine as free software (binary checksum for login, cheat protection and validation) and sell the data and/or subscription time. More on why here.

Kind of. While I personally don't find OSX(Tiger) to be the high-performing, uber-intuitive, victoriously user-friendly OS people keep telling me it is, it's impossible to ignore Apple have created an incredibly successful, reasonably brand-loyal consumer base.

And I agree, they are in an advantageous position, however one stricken by a crippling glass ceiling.

OSX simply isn't the kind of platform nomadic OS it needs to be to reach ubiquity. Linux, being non-proprietary, has developed a talent for adaptability innately - arguably a the bulk of Linux kernel development itself is invested in sustaining this critical attribute. While some complain about KDE and Gnome not having the bells-and-whistles of OSX, Linux (if ever one can sum it's parts) has quietly been frying more important fish, and very wisely too.

Nowadays, it's increasingly hard to move data around a network without it being touched by Linux. Now phones, kiosks, ATM's and game consoles.. The word 'Linux', not being publically obliged to carry a brand, increasingly represents the set of robust and future-proof tools a given service provider deploys to get the job done. Now we're seeing it extend to public utility, government and administrative desktops en masse.

'Linux' simply doesn't appear on the kinds of brand-conscious radars we're used to using when tracking technology and culture, yet quietly continues to be the fastest growing operating system in the world. Apple however, is a company built on brand innovation, initially as the 'popular minority'; a vain, techo-arian multinational that has boldy engineered a bridge between the computer (as appliance) and the public space of popular culture. Here, the Apple brand is both a boon and an anchor, something to protect (not just any x86 machine), yet something to wear out (iPod).

In the context of popular operating systems, OSX is thus a social, yet exotic animal. As such it is desired as pet, but quickly dies when transported from it's natural habitat. Comparing OSX to others, outside the context of it's crippling architectural dependence, produces false and unrealistic prospects.

Yet, IBM loves it and is now, apparently, committing to it. Once IBM backs an open-source product (e.g. Linux) and ships it to customers, then IBM ensures that the product performs flawlessly. Who can doubt that IBM is a significant contributor to the high-reliability of today's Linux build? The strength of IBM is its commitment to its customers.

What is interesting is that, from a business perspective, there is no need for Harmony to be fully compliant with Sun's closed Java standards. The route to divergence is to (1) define a new language called "Harmony", (2) place it with a standards body, (3) maintain full compatibility with only the current version of Java (in order to support all of IBM's current customers and developers) but deliberately diverge from compatibility for future versions of Java, (4) arrange for IBM to jettison use of future versions of Java and to fully utilize Harmony, (5) generously borrow the best concepts from Java while ensuring that the word "Java" is never used (in order to avoid a lawsuit), and (6) build support for Harmony in GCC. This strategy could work.

C# is a ripoff of Java and is quite popular.

There is nothing magical about the Java name. Just consistently use the name, "Harmony", on this proposed Java variant. Everyone will know that "Harmony" is Java -- plus additional stuff. Even if "Harmony" is only 98% compatible with future versions of Java, "Harmony" could grab the software development if the open-source community backs it.