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Questions for a Lecture on Microsoft's Palladium?
An anonymous reader asks: "Microsoft is going to be giving a lecture on Palladium
for my Computer and Network Security class at MIT this Thursday. We're told that it's going to be the most technically detailed lecture publically given to date, and that we should be armed with questions as a result. Any suggestions from the Slashdot crowd? What technical details have you been dying to know about Palladium?" It would be interesting to hear back from someone who is planning on attending this. For those who wish they were, but can't for one reason or another, what would you have asked by proxy?
woo-hoo! Seriously, though. I think this is a great opportinuty to clear up a lot of the ambiguities surrounding Palladium, DRM, etc. Or it could be a chance for MS to make themselves look like asses again. Who knows what will happen?
The only reason I keep my Windows partition is so I can mount it like the bitch that it is.
Okay, I know I'm not going to be in the popular view here, but it's gotta be said: Redhat cannot do everything that Windows does.
Do this: Go buy any old digital camera and try to download the pics on a RedHat system.
Go buy a DVD-R and try to burn a disc.
Go to any old website showing media (RealPlayer, QuickTime, Windows Media) and see how successful you are at viewing content.
Buy a Firewire DV Video Camera and see how successful you are in getting the video off and editing it.
Try to visit a site that's made for IE.
Go to the store and buy a game.
Buy a PDA and get it to synch up.
Your network card doesn't work, find somebody you know willing to come over and fix it.
A good chunk of these problems have been solved on Linux, and if you're willing to do some insane bs to get them running, you're fine. The steps to do any of the above in Windows are very easy, especially in comparison to Linux.
Some of these challenges are a result of MS's monopoly + it's just plain a de-facto standard. Despite popular belief, there is some good for this. You can't go wrong with having a Windows machine. You're compatible with the internet, and you're compatible with nearly every game and piece of hardware available for PC's.
The problem isn't that people are unaware of it, the problem is that Windows does the best job of being friendly to the user. Sure Linux has technical superiorities in some ways, that alone does not make a good OS.
For that 90% of the people you mentioned, Windows is by far the best choice for them. Linux is a distant 3rd with OSX in 2nd place.
If you want a simple internet machine, Linux does a wonderful job for that. But the moment you start getting peripherals involved, Linux has a huge uphill battle. It just doesn't make sense for that 90 percentile to run Linux today.
You know what though? That can't be true forever. I do feel that Linux can overtake Windows. The first step is to get millions of people running the OS. That's slowly but surely starting to happen. Every time MS makes a misstep (like their SP 3 licensing BS), Linux has an opportunity to make an inroads. When a DVD-Burner manufacturer is swamped with "Uhh where's the Linux Drivers?" questions, they'll eventually realize "oh.. people use Linux too, we should support it...." When that starts to happen, Linux then can become a viable alternative to Windows.
MS didn't get big by bullying people around, it got big because it made computers into something average people can make really good use of. That is why people are buying Windows machines, it's not because they're unaware of Linux's existence. Today, it is not ready.
Why does tom care?
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Am I, as the owner of the computer, going to have final say in what can and what can't run on my computer?
How about: I'm a freelance developer, and I use Cygwin to do most of my development. I have invested over ten years in learning these tools, and as a result, I am incredibly efficient with them. For those of you who don't know, Cygwin is an OpenSource extension to Windows that runs common UNIX programs like Emacs & GCC. Will I be able to run Cygwin in a Palladium environment, or will I be forced to run only Microsoft-approved development tools with corresponding EULAs?
moto411.com
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