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Windows in 2020
sasha328 writes: "I came across this article on LA Times while I was reading the LinuxToday news site. It is very funny, and points out the in layman's language, the problem with homogeneity in computer OSes. Well worth reading."
Yes, you do get economies of scale if you have huge companies. Coca Cola can ship beverages cheaper and more reliably than 10000 local bottling plants all over the country. You do derive benefits from comparative advantage if you have completely open trade.
The problem is that the megacorp approach sacrifices the diversity that underlies a healthy free market just as much as a healthy ecology. In effect, the cheaper soft drink or the cheaper PC is bought by opportunity costs: society and the market lose the ability to adapt to changing conditions quickly because there are no alternative players that can take over. Instead, the leading players need to laboriously restructure and adapt, with all the speed and efficiency of the Soviet (planned) economy.
What can be done about it? Giving the states more autonomy helps. Allowing states and cities to adopt a wide variety of local regulations helps. Taxing interstate and international commerce helps. A progressive taxation system for corporate profits might help. But all of those are fighting words to conservative economists, as well as corporate backed politicians. And such approaches are not without risk of abuse and inherent problems either.
There is something you can do as a customer, though: be aware of the importance of diversity. Buy local, buy from small companies, and buy the non-mainstream product. Pay a little more for the high-quality specialty item. Don't worry about what the Joneses do. Do without, or do something different. Don't make a habit of eating at big chains, watching a lot of TV, etc. In addition too creating economic diversity, your health and your wallet will thank you, too. But don't obsess about it, either: moderate change in a lot of people is far better than obsessive change in a few.
Be's story that it was all Apple's fault may have had more to do with getting passed over in favour of NeXT and receiving a large cash injection from Intel...
-dair (yeah, OT)
firstly, microsoft does not have a stranglehold on the market. Have you ever READ the licence for Microsoft products? Nobody would in their RIGHT mind pay a lot of dollars for a product when there are NO GUARANTEES about whether it works or not, and it also specifically says that the producer is NOT LIABLE for any inherent flaws?
How would you like it if GM made a car with brakes that disintegrated after three months, but could not be sued because of several clauses in the buying contract?
Whether we like tort law or not, it HAS provided increased security for John Average. Poor security not only leads to a questionable reputation, it leads to direct expenses in lawsuit settlements and/or court proceedings.
Contradicting yourself in adjoining sentences. nice stuff. and hey - a much better way of killing yourself in traffic is drinking and driving.
Stop the brainwash
Faster? Hrm, have *you* loaded KDE2 lately? :P
:) ) but I hear that the ALSA stuff works wonders. However, as this is a basic, learning machine, that's not really an issue (indeed, I'm glad it's broken because eventually I'll be annoyed enough to actually figure out how to fix it).
Seriously, though. I agree 100% to the post previous to yours. I'm running Windows2000 and have a significant amount of money invested in *commercial* software (*cough* Office *cough*) that I'm not going to just throw away because someone says "linux is faster and more stable." My Win2K experience is, for the most part, rock solid. It works for me. I will not upgrade to XP for the same reasons as stated before: I'm uncomfortable with the idea of my machine calling "home" and the idea of having to stay on the line for "tech support" to get a new key if I continue to geek out and buy new hardware. Fuck that.
I've got Redhat 7.1 on my Sony Vaio 505FX. Mainly because I didn't want to be a pir8 and just put Win2k on it (win98 is just so horribly unstable). Linux works well on this laptop, although the sound is still not configured right (and I don't have internet access with the laptop. If you want to send me a PCMCIA ethernet card, feel free to.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I'm sure the resulting discussion about how evil-evil-evil OS homogeny is would be totally different if it were our OS that "won" the great battle for the desktop. We'd all be proudly singing the virtues about how Linux did away with the confusion inherent with supporting multiple platforms, and how it was Linux that prevailed in its design and implementation.
But it's not Linux's supremacy that's being talked about here. It's Windows..And that makes you angry.
Now, before you call me a turncoat, i'll underscore the fact that I love Linux -- I use it on the majority of systems I own, and couldn't live without it -- Regardless of that, I cant help but notice that I've grown increasingly disappointed with the Linux community's almost blind willingness to look down upon Windows as a platform et al, regardless of the fact that for most things, Windows is (nowadays) far easier to deal with from a user's standpoint than Linux us. To some degree, I myself am partly to blame -- I used to hate Microsoft simply because it was fun to, and not based on any real concrete observations. Regardless of how much I like Linux, i'd be lying if I said Microsoft hadn't come a long way in the past year or two in improving the stability and usability of their OS offerings.
The Linux community itself is partly to blame for Microsoft's domination. Its our own partisanship and internal bickering that has prevented Linux from showing a unified face to the world when it came to the desktop -- Had KDE and Gnome merged for the common good, and challenged Microsoft's stronghold on the desktop, we would have probably made it...But instead that challenge ended up being more of separate Gnome vs. Microsoft, then KDE vs. Microsoft battle. We got squashed, and sent home with our tail between our legs. That was our fault, not theirs.
OS homogeny is a wonderful thing if it's your OS they're talking about. Its only when that homogeny is achieved with an OS you don't like that homogeny becomes on par with communism. Ask yourself if your opinion on OS homogeny would be the same if Linux were king of the hill versus Windows. How you answer that question will dictate wether or not you need to re-evaluate your view of the competition.
BTW, thanks to all who visited the site earlier today. It was a good stress test!
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
The basic tenet of a capitalist, free-enterprise system is that through competition and the invisible hand of supply-demand, products and productivity will constantly improve and thus society as a whole will prosper.
This, obviously, isn't happening.
Microsoft has no strong commercial competitors. AMD and Intel are the only major processor makers for PCs. Nobody can touch Rambus' stuff. No one sells cola at the same price as Coke or Pepsi that is any better. Wizards of the Coast has the only big CCG. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the large new corps have managed to warp the capitalist system with their own money. Theorectically no one in one of the modern capitalist countries, especially a hardcore capitalist one like America, should be able to strangle the market for their goods like Microsoft does or Rambus almost did - what needs a patch for our problems is not M$ but modern capitalism, and I don't like the way things are going, because in that path the only major wake-up call may turn out to be...
Hacked by Chinese!
{/rant)
As plastik55 says, the basic hardware bootstrapping is done with OF. Information about particular devices is available from Darwin. The idea that it's somehow illegal to use this information is a bit implausible, unless you entered into a contract to say you wouldn't - but I doubt that applies to Be.
-dair (IANAL, but I doubt the person from Be who told you this was either)
I wish I could come up with a joke after reading this article, but I simply cannot. It hits too close to the heart of the problem, and it's a huge one. Because aparently this is where the world is going right now, and there is no going back. The problem is that everything, not only computers, is becomming more and more the same.
:P
I was going to write a longer post, but then I realized one thing: There is no way that this can be stopped. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, or maybe not. But then look around you! Even though in the early 1900s there were cars running on gas, steam and electricity, only the gas cars remain. Why? They were the most feasible to build. Now the technology has evolved to a point where we might see some other kind of car using maybe H2, solar or some other energy source, and all the new cars will use that new, better source.
Another example is the cell phone. In the beginning all were analogue (at least in the US). Go to Europe now, and most people don't even know what that is. Why? All cells there are digital, and most of the ones in the US are the same. And how many digital protocols are there? GPM is only one of them, but soon 3G is comming, and that will be the world standard.
The point I'm trying to make is that maybe uniformity is good. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, although I doubt it! (I would never trade Linux for Windoze). So the problem is not that every computer will run the same OS. The problem however is finding the best OS to use on all computers.
But it's 5am where I live, and I think I'll solve it tomorrow.
Actually what I find disturbing is that 'PC' seems be by some weird definition to mean 'runs MS Windows'. I get tired of hearing the watered down phrase, "you have a PC or a MAC". I'm sorry, but we all have PC's...it's called a Personal Computer. Doesn't matter what the operating system running on it is. I say yeah, I have linux machine and windows machine.
Perhaps it's some tie-in with that other PC acronym, political correctness. Ya gotta have a PC to be PC, or something like that. Yech.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
Yeah, the corn analogy is excellent. What's that saying they used to have back in the short-sighted 20th century? "You find something that works - you stick with it!" Yeah, maybe that works in the imaginary world of permanence, but take a cue from the mother of us all: You find something that works, attack it with everything you've got - virus, plague, famine, pestilence - until it goes extinct. It may be just a little red worm now, but someday it'll grow up to be Shai Hulud!
The bit about the subscription system's reverberating side-effects rings awfully true too. Proprietary and convoluted file-formats can only do so much to bring about the American(TM) dream of planned obsolescence. But mark my words: Subscription software is flawed in its genes and doomed to fail. Anything that goes straight to profit-motive without providing added value to the consumer *cough*antitrust*cough* just seems a little dubious.
Personally, I'm getting one of my hotshot Windows geek buddies to whip up a nice short hack to disable the automatic shutoff for my own personal use. Want one? It'll be printed on T-shirts next year in rebus sistena verse.
-- thinkyhead software and media
>I don't want to play chess with my microwave, I just want to reheat the damn pizza!
yeah, that is what you think! And mobile phones are only for calling right? Bzzzzt, try again.
nosig today
Having free, open alternatives allow innovations to take place that would not be possible in Windows. There is often far more inventiveness going on at the fringe then at the core. If the innovations are important enough, they may get ported, or even convince users to leave MS. It is not necessary for everyone to know about *nix right now, good, useful new features and programs will stand on their own.
On a last quick note, I would also add that happily, windows does not seem to scale well in any direction except up:) Maybe we'll see toasters with 512MB of ram in a few years but... I doubt it. I don't want to play chess with my microwave, I just want to reheat the damn pizza! -_^
I think of it like this.
Windows (M$ products in general) rae like fruit flies (or any insect). only lasts a day but there are so many of them, with new ones all the time.
the *nix's are more like bigger creatures. they last for ages but there aren't nearly as many of them.
not the best analogy but hey, what do you expect for 7 seconds of thought?
dave
The more I used, the more I learned and the easier linux became, and the harder MS looked. Looking back on things, it's amazing to me that anyone would trust configurations to anything but a human readable text file. The amount of trust required of MS to do anything is amazing. Good grief, just look at that sloppy NetBIOS. Look at all the hidden stuff. How does anyone memorize that awful pile of symbols that are the ever shifting MS interface? Work, with NT desktops, it painfully constricted and limiting. No compilers, how can people stand it? Only a single window manager with a single virtual screen? Only one crippled shell? I have no regrets as 98 dies on it's last machines in my house. It sucked, then it died. Win2k? No way!
The sooner you move, the happier you will be. The things you learn from MS are either counter productive or plain useless. Want stability, get Debian potato. Want privacy, get ssh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Will the metaphor of 'windows' still be around in 2020?
I thought that we would have evolved to something more multi-dimensional - rooms, say?
After Code Red, the WinBox is rooted.
Even when the next Apache exploit is found, it only gains access as the user "apache", and even that will frequently be in a chroot jail.
Security is not a firewall.
Security is not a bug-free program.
Security is not even a set of procedures.
Security is a process, and encompasses all of the above. Security also realizes that accidents happen, and attempts to minimize the aftereffects.
That is one place Windows falls down, there is inadequate system partitioning. IIS and its bevy of extensions run with Admin authority. No dedicated accounts, no chroot jails, etc. At least not by default.
Default security has been pretty bad on Linux, but gets better all the time. Furthermore, there are releases geared toward the server business that are much tighter, by default.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The natural refute to what I've said, is that Linux will afford a greater degree of variety in each of its implementations, while Windows will likely be the same software, with the same vulnerabilities on every device that runs it.
That too, however is unfair. Witness the X-Box--A very slim kernel (it's smaller than WindowsCE) with extraneous functionality ripped out. Microsoft is capable of de-bloating their kernel.
Further, the idea that security exploits would exist across device implementations is pretty absurd. Beyond the possibility of bugs in, say, the Networking stack or race conditions in the kernel, this simply isn't likely to happen. A toaster would not need to run IIS, and so would not run IIS, hence it has no fear of Code Red.
This is akin to arguing against the ubiquetious (no, I do know how to spell that. My apologies) adoption of Linux because of say, the exploit in piranha from a while back.
However, the article was not about security problems in Windows. It was about the security problems inherent in the software monoculture that Microsoft seems bent on creating.
Ecologists have long been aware of the dangers of monoculture. Using only a single strain of a species makes that species vulnerable to decimation by a single disease or parisite. The answer they have come up with is not to create a single super-resistent strain of each crop, but to plant a variety of strains so that if a new disease exploits a vulnerability in one, it won't threaten the whole species.
Does the same hold true for software? I think it does. Imagine what a Code Red-like worm could do if 90% of all machines were running the same OS/server combination. Without the buffer of uninfectable machines, we would have a real mess on our hands.