This is why my suggestion of separating out the sale of the operating system itself when you buy a computer is such a great idea.
Because everyone will have to be play "fair and square" to get OS sales, there is the incentive to lower costs and also improve the end user experience for the operating system.
Unfortunately, in such a scenario, it exposes Linux's biggest fault, namely that unless you have actually learned how to run UNIX (mostly from taking a lot of classes in college), it's still beyond the expertise of most end users. Yes, I know about the much-improved installation of Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 and Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Corel's plan for a supposed very easy to use Linux, but its hardware support is still way behind Windows as of now.
Note I said "as of now"; with the equal chance for Linux (or FreeBSD or BeOS) to be installed on machines in the future, I am hopeful that Linus Torvalds and the thousand or so programmers that write Linux OS code will rapidly make improvements so we will finally see a much wider selection of software drivers, plus support for "hot docked" devices that connect through the external USB and IEEE-1394 ports.
This is the golden oppurtunity for the Linux; DON'T squander it by being "behind the curve" in hardware support, because Intel have already started designing motherboards that will dispense with parallel and serial ports, even PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports in favor of every external device plugged in through the USB and (very likely) IEEE-1394 ports. I hope that the upcoming Linux 2.4.x kernel will allow for Linux to finally "hit the big time" for large scale corporate use and even increasing home use.
Someone finally out there says it all: Linux in its current state is NOT yet a good substitute for Windows 98/NT/2000 if you're not computer literate.
My suggestion--namely forcing everyone to sell the operating system as a separate cost item when you buy your computer--will actually BENEFIT the Linux crowd, because they'll be finally forced to add ease-of-use features that will make Linux easy to install, configure and use in order to compete against Microsoft in the all-important home user and corporate user market.
People out there forget that most computer peripherals first have a Windows 95/98/NT driver available, because that's what most users will be running. Let's see how long before we'll see Linux drivers for most inkjet printers, backup peripherals, USB peripherals and IEEE-1394 peripherals.
I am not surprised that the document is available in WP6 and PDF format.
The reasons are simple:
1. WordPerfect is the de facto standard for Word Processors in the legal profession; WP 4.2 and later has this feature called Table of Authorities that is VERY useful for creating legal documents.
2. Adobe.PDF files is recognized as THE standard for reading formatted documents regardless of operating system. The advantage of PDF is that once the document is formatted in PDF format, the formatting will ALWAYS stay the same regardless of Acrobat Reader version.
Besides, Office 95, 97 and 2000 have.WPD file filters, so....
In many ways, given the fact that Judge Jackson presided at the original trial of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 95 OSR 2.0, I'm not surprised at his ruling.
Whether the case will be upheld in the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC (which ruled in favor of Microsoft including Internet Explorer in Windows 95 back in early 1998) is a very different story, though. Like I said, DON'T expect a legal resolution until the Supreme Court rules on this at least 18 to 24 months from now, if not longer.
I would have preferred to have a different judge than Thomas P. Jackson to have presided over this trial, because of the earlier ruling he did on an earlier case against Microsoft that was subsequently overturned in Federal Appeals Court.
I expect the following to occur:
1. The final ruling will be done probably in February 2000.
2. Microsoft will likely appeal to the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC, and that will probably drag on for 9-11 months.
3. Whoever wins that appeal will probably file for a case in the US Supreme Court, and that process will take anywhere between 12 and 18 months, depending on the time the appeal is filed with the Supreme Court.
In short, a final ruling on US v. Microsoft will be issued during the Spring 2002 term of the US Supreme Court.
Also, there's also the major "X" factor of the upcoming US Presidential elections. If George W. Bush is elected President, both Janet Reno and Robert Klein at DoJ will be replaced, and we have the distinct possibility that the DoJ may end up with people that will just drop the case altogether.
By making everyone buy the operating system as a separate cost item, everyone will have "up front" pricing on getting a copy of Windows 98, Windows 2000, any commercial Linux distribution, BeOS, etc. Because the price of the OS is already known, there is no incentive to raise the price, in fact, I might see Microsoft LOWER the price of Windows 98 and Windows 2000 in order to compete with the US$40-$50 cost of buying a retail Linux distribution.
You haven't read a good book on economics, right? In the case of microeconomics, any monopoly or near monopoly situation will usually lend itself to "natural correction" sooner or later (look at OPEC--they got their butts kicked by 1986 because natural economic forces could not allow them to keep up their $34/bbl. price).
If there's any company that needs to be investigated by the DoJ, it's Intel--now THERE'S a company that almost has no competition in the computer hardware business, despite the efforts of AMD. How do you explain Intel's threat to Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers that prevented many of them from announcing or making Athlon-compatible motherboards?
I think there is the strong implication that by separating hardware sales from OS sales, everyone will have to compete on price--and with that wide open competition, Microsoft will probably reduce the price of Windows 98 to $40 and Windows 2000 Professional to between $90 to $120.
Because there is pricing up front, there is no incentive to give different prices to different hardware vendors that chose to buy Windows 98/2000.
As I said originally, WordPerfect has been pretty much standardized by the legal profession because its built-in capabilities--notably the Table of Authorities and the ability to print line numbering--is extremely useful to lawyers in general. It's been that way since WordPerfect 4.2 and later came out in 1985.
1. The file is in WorldPerfect format because WordPerfect is THE preferred word processor for the legal profession, thanks to WP's very powerful "table of authorities" feature. You can generate legal-quality papers, complete with line numbering, in WordPerfect 4.2 and newer very easily.
2. Adobe's.PDF format is also very useful, because it can be read by anyone with Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader (which is available for multiple operating systems). People forget that.PDF files can have many different types of fonts, not to mention full color, in the file format.
The problem is that 85% of the world's computers run on Microsoft OS and application software. Weaning them off MS software into something like Linux will be quite expensive, because of the retraining costs involved and also the manpower cost of installing Linux.
Despite the sound of the crowd wanting blood, I think US v. Microsoft may have been rendered obselete before its time.
The reasons are simple: a LOT has changed in the computer industry since the May 1998 filing. The fact that America Online continues to attract users, AOL has purchased Netscape, alternate devices to get onto the Internet has started to surface, and the rapid rise of everyone's favorite OS (Linux) in the last 24 months has reduced the potential influence that Microsoft could have had on the Internet.
The most equitable outcome of this trial is NOT a breakup of Microsoft; we'll most likely end up in a situation that was common in the desktop computer industry circa 1976 to 1985, when everyone had to purchase the operating system as a separate cost item. That way, there will be a level playing field for everyone in the OS industry, and whoever can be successful in terms of price and ease of use will win hands down.
Also, given the fact this case will be appealled to the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC almost immediately, not to mention finally ending up in the US Supreme Court, don't expect a conclusion to this case until at least late 2001 to early 2002. And given the pace of change in "Internet time," who knows what will be the state of Microsoft in 2002, either.
Given the increasing popularity of Linux, and centralized repository of GPL'd files and source code will be a HUGE boon for Linux itself.
That way, Linux users won't have to hunt all over the 'Net TRYING to find the files they want. This is going to be more critical with the release of the Linux 2.4.x kernel the end of this year with its increasing support for USB (and eventually IEEE-1394) devices.
Complain all you want about Microsoft, but the fact that MS has a very good download library makes it relatively easy to do things like patches and upgrades.
I think Freshmeat should be converted to this, with FTP servers directly connected to the Freshmeat HTTP server for easy downloads.
People forget that we're talking files that are so big that even WITH broadband Internet access it'll take MANY hours just to download.
Besides, discs are quite inexpensive. Places like Reel.com and other online DVD retailers can sell you a DVD movie for very, very cheap, so the incentive to make a pirated copy is NOT there.
I think the simple solution is to just up the encryption level on the CSS to 128 bits. At 128-bit encryption, if you want to break the encryption better think multi-million dollar computer systems just to consider breaking the encryption.
I find it very surprising that the DVD encryption only used a 40-bit scheme. The problem is that anyone with a decently fast DESKTOP computer (e.g., Pentium III 550 MHz or Athlon 500 MHz minimum) could break the 40-bit scheme pretty quickly.
I think what will happen is that the DVD standards people will probably modify the encryption scheme to 128 bits, and believe me, to break 128-bit encryption you'll need hardware that is WAY, WAY beyond the expense of 99% of computer users nowadays. We're talking a multi-million dollar supercomputer or a HUGE Beowulf cluster (maybe over 600 machines in the cluster, and we're talking ones using the Alpha CPU) just to even consider breaking 128-bit encryption.
I won't be surprised that the modification of CSS to 128-bit encryption happens in the next year or so.
I have this feeling that ATI is incorporating Linux support so they could include display drivers with the soon-to-be-released Corel Linux.
ATI may not have the fastest board, but once the Rage Fury MAXX with the double Rage Fury graphics chip setup is available, the first one that can write an Linux OpenGL driver to takes advantage of the Serial Line Interleave (SLI) mode of the Rage Fury MAXX is going to be very popular very quickly.;-)
Once CPU's go past 700 MHz in speed, the current PC100 and PC133 SDRAMs will become the big bottlenecks if you have to process very large graphics and database files. Remember, hard drive speed bottlenecks have been alleviated with ATA-66 IDE and SCSI Ultra-Wide and Ultra2-Wide technology, and graphics cards are also not the bottlenecks either (thanks to the work of nVidia, Matrox, ATI and S3).
This why things like Rambus DRAM and attempts to get SDRAM to go even faster than 133 MHz are being developed.
I think the problem with most software MPEG-2 decoders is that they DON'T take advantage of the CPU multimedia extensions like the Pentium III SSE or the Athlon enhanced 3DNow!
I'd wish someone would write one that does use SSE or 3DNow!, because both of these extensions are well-suited for more efficient MPEG-2 video decoding.
At 1-meter resolution, it's still very useful for intelligence gathering. For one thing, at that resolution, details of buildings, manufacturing plants, airports, shipping docks, etc. stand out very clearly. 1-meter resolution is clear enough to see whether a missile silo is open or not, too.
I'm sure that the major networks will use Ikonos to find the fixed military installations of the Iranians in the Persian Gulf (remember, ABC News was able to get SPOT imagery at 10-meter resolution that still showed clearly the anti-shipping missile launchers in Iran).
However, Ikonos still takes time to process the 1-meter resolution image. Our latest spysats can probably resolve down to around 50 millimeter (around 2 inch) resolution, and will broadcast those pictures digitally in REAL time.
The passing of Akio Morita is truly the passing of a man who almost single-handedly changed the world of consumer electronics.
From the development of the first successful transistor radio, the Trinitron tube TV, and so on to the co-development of the Compact Disc, Sony under the guidance of Morita was one of the few companies most visibly responsible for raising Japan out of the ashes of World War II to economic prominence today. Morita did such a masterful salesmenship job for Sony that when Sony announced their PlayStation game console, it literally became almost overnight the #1 gaming platform.
If I were to list the top 10 industrialists of the 20th Century, Akio Morita belongs in this esteemed company.
Re:Can You Install Windows 98? I think I can!
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 1
If you're doing a from-scratch installation of any operating system (e.g., there's no partition defined on a hard drive), the installation of at least a workable Windows 98 installation takes about 40 minutes from start to finish if you boot directly from the OEM or full package Windows 98 CD-ROM disk. About 40% of that time is wasted doing a high-level formatting of the hard drive.
If you know how to create the Windows 98 OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK) setup boot diskette, the from-scratch installation I mentioned above takes about 14 minutes less, because you don't waste your time with a high-level format of the entire hard drive.
Getting RedHat or Caldera Linux onto a hard drive is easy, but configuring the OS so it functions to something resembling Windows 98's graphical interface using Gnome or KDE is going to take quite a bit longer. Given that most graphics cards have Windows 98 drivers, taking advantage of the graphics card's capabilities is pretty easy to do.
In short, my big disappointment with Linux is the fact configuring the OS is still quite complicated unless you have a good working knowledge of UNIX itself. Now we know why Linux Torvalds is working on the Linux 2.4.x kernel, which will have Plug-and-Play like installation of drivers and other hardware support.
Re:Can You Install Windows 98? I think I can!
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 1
Tino,
If you system hard drive has no partitions on it and if your computer can boot directly from a CD-ROM drive (either ATAPI 1.2 compatible IDE or SCSI connected to Adaptec host adapter), you can literally install the full or OEM installation version of Windows 98 directly from a CD-ROM boot. Try THAT with Linux.
I think the BEST thing about Windows 98 is the fact Microsoft _has_ heard the complaints about Windows 95 installation and has done something about it. On most modern computers, I can have Windows 98 installed and running in about 45 minutes. If you're not used to UNIX, installing Linux will take at least twice as long.
Re:Can You Install Windows 98? I think I can!
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 0
Fortunately, installing the OEM version of Windows 98 is not the painful experience that some people make it out to be.
Just as long as your hardware is on the Windows Hardware Compatibility List, installation should go fairly easily. Remember, the Windows 98 CD-ROM disk is self-booting, so if your system can boot from an ATAPI 1.2-compliant IDE CD-ROM drive or a SCSI CD-ROM drive attached to an Adaptec host adapter, the installation actually is pretty automatic.
Once you get Windows 98 installed, create an emergency boot disk, and copy FORMAT.COM from the \windows\command directory onto the disk. Unlike the older emergency boot disks for Windows 95, the Windows 98 Emergency Boot Disk DOES load the appropriate CD-ROM drivers, so you can actually do a full reload of Windows 98 in case of a major system crash.
I have news for you--this is NOT the first time in human history where technological change turned the world upside down and caused all kinds of headaches.
Ever heard of the Rennaissance? The development during that period of the metal movable-type printing press by one Johannes Gutenberg circa 1453 caused in the 30 years afterward a knowledge revolution that turned Europe upside down, because it drastically reduced the cost of the transmission of information, namely that you could print thousands of copies of the same book.
The result was quite obvious--now that people could read the writings of the Church, they discovered that many Church writings often contradicted each other. One person, Martin Luther, printed his famous "Ninety-Five Theses" and had it posted in several places in Europe. The rest, they say, is history.
I find the view of the Luddites to in the end just be a bunch of sour grapes. They don't understand how horrible human existance was before this century, before modern medicine allows human lifespan to reach over 73 years on average. You were lucky if you could live till 50 even as recently as 1900.
If the rumor stated by Apple Insider is true, then Apple has finally addressed my biggest gripe about the iMac, namely the shortage of RAM and too small a hard drive.
With 64 to 128 MB of RAM and a 10 GB or larger hard drive, not to mention the incorporation of the ATI Rage 128 chipset, this means the new "Kihei" iMac's will finally have the computing power that will satisfy even demanding users. It'll be interesting to see how much Apple will price this machine.
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This is why my suggestion of separating out the sale of the operating system itself when you buy a computer is such a great idea.
Because everyone will have to be play "fair and square" to get OS sales, there is the incentive to lower costs and also improve the end user experience for the operating system.
Unfortunately, in such a scenario, it exposes Linux's biggest fault, namely that unless you have actually learned how to run UNIX (mostly from taking a lot of classes in college), it's still beyond the expertise of most end users. Yes, I know about the much-improved installation of Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 and Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Corel's plan for a supposed very easy to use Linux, but its hardware support is still way behind Windows as of now.
Note I said "as of now"; with the equal chance for Linux (or FreeBSD or BeOS) to be installed on machines in the future, I am hopeful that Linus Torvalds and the thousand or so programmers that write Linux OS code will rapidly make improvements so we will finally see a much wider selection of software drivers, plus support for "hot docked" devices that connect through the external USB and IEEE-1394 ports.
This is the golden oppurtunity for the Linux; DON'T squander it by being "behind the curve" in hardware support, because Intel have already started designing motherboards that will dispense with parallel and serial ports, even PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports in favor of every external device plugged in through the USB and (very likely) IEEE-1394 ports. I hope that the upcoming Linux 2.4.x kernel will allow for Linux to finally "hit the big time" for large scale corporate use and even increasing home use.
Hooray!!
Someone finally out there says it all: Linux in its current state is NOT yet a good substitute for Windows 98/NT/2000 if you're not computer literate.
My suggestion--namely forcing everyone to sell the operating system as a separate cost item when you buy your computer--will actually BENEFIT the Linux crowd, because they'll be finally forced to add ease-of-use features that will make Linux easy to install, configure and use in order to compete against Microsoft in the all-important home user and corporate user market.
People out there forget that most computer peripherals first have a Windows 95/98/NT driver available, because that's what most users will be running. Let's see how long before we'll see Linux drivers for most inkjet printers, backup peripherals, USB peripherals and IEEE-1394 peripherals.
I am not surprised that the document is available in WP6 and PDF format.
.PDF files is recognized as THE standard for reading formatted documents regardless of operating system. The advantage of PDF is that once the document is formatted in PDF format, the formatting will ALWAYS stay the same regardless of Acrobat Reader version.
.WPD file filters, so....
The reasons are simple:
1. WordPerfect is the de facto standard for Word Processors in the legal profession; WP 4.2 and later has this feature called Table of Authorities that is VERY useful for creating legal documents.
2. Adobe
Besides, Office 95, 97 and 2000 have
In many ways, given the fact that Judge Jackson presided at the original trial of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 95 OSR 2.0, I'm not surprised at his ruling.
Whether the case will be upheld in the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC (which ruled in favor of Microsoft including Internet Explorer in Windows 95 back in early 1998) is a very different story, though. Like I said, DON'T expect a legal resolution until the Supreme Court rules on this at least 18 to 24 months from now, if not longer.
I would have preferred to have a different judge than Thomas P. Jackson to have presided over this trial, because of the earlier ruling he did on an earlier case against Microsoft that was subsequently overturned in Federal Appeals Court.
I expect the following to occur:
1. The final ruling will be done probably in February 2000.
2. Microsoft will likely appeal to the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC, and that will probably drag on for 9-11 months.
3. Whoever wins that appeal will probably file for a case in the US Supreme Court, and that process will take anywhere between 12 and 18 months, depending on the time the appeal is filed with the Supreme Court.
In short, a final ruling on US v. Microsoft will be issued during the Spring 2002 term of the US Supreme Court.
Also, there's also the major "X" factor of the upcoming US Presidential elections. If George W. Bush is elected President, both Janet Reno and Robert Klein at DoJ will be replaced, and we have the distinct possibility that the DoJ may end up with people that will just drop the case altogether.
No they won't!!
By making everyone buy the operating system as a separate cost item, everyone will have "up front" pricing on getting a copy of Windows 98, Windows 2000, any commercial Linux distribution, BeOS, etc. Because the price of the OS is already known, there is no incentive to raise the price, in fact, I might see Microsoft LOWER the price of Windows 98 and Windows 2000 in order to compete with the US$40-$50 cost of buying a retail Linux distribution.
You haven't read a good book on economics, right? In the case of microeconomics, any monopoly or near monopoly situation will usually lend itself to "natural correction" sooner or later (look at OPEC--they got their butts kicked by 1986 because natural economic forces could not allow them to keep up their $34/bbl. price).
If there's any company that needs to be investigated by the DoJ, it's Intel--now THERE'S a company that almost has no competition in the computer hardware business, despite the efforts of AMD. How do you explain Intel's threat to Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers that prevented many of them from announcing or making Athlon-compatible motherboards?
Thomas,
I think there is the strong implication that by separating hardware sales from OS sales, everyone will have to compete on price--and with that wide open competition, Microsoft will probably reduce the price of Windows 98 to $40 and Windows 2000 Professional to between $90 to $120.
Because there is pricing up front, there is no incentive to give different prices to different hardware vendors that chose to buy Windows 98/2000.
As I said originally, WordPerfect has been pretty much standardized by the legal profession because its built-in capabilities--notably the Table of Authorities and the ability to print line numbering--is extremely useful to lawyers in general. It's been that way since WordPerfect 4.2 and later came out in 1985.
There's a good reason for this:
.PDF format is also very useful, because it can be read by anyone with Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader (which is available for multiple operating systems). People forget that .PDF files can have many different types of fonts, not to mention full color, in the file format.
1. The file is in WorldPerfect format because WordPerfect is THE preferred word processor for the legal profession, thanks to WP's very powerful "table of authorities" feature. You can generate legal-quality papers, complete with line numbering, in WordPerfect 4.2 and newer very easily.
2. Adobe's
I certainly do!
The problem is that 85% of the world's computers run on Microsoft OS and application software. Weaning them off MS software into something like Linux will be quite expensive, because of the retraining costs involved and also the manpower cost of installing Linux.
Folks,
Despite the sound of the crowd wanting blood, I think US v. Microsoft may have been rendered obselete before its time.
The reasons are simple: a LOT has changed in the computer industry since the May 1998 filing. The fact that America Online continues to attract users, AOL has purchased Netscape, alternate devices to get onto the Internet has started to surface, and the rapid rise of everyone's favorite OS (Linux) in the last 24 months has reduced the potential influence that Microsoft could have had on the Internet.
The most equitable outcome of this trial is NOT a breakup of Microsoft; we'll most likely end up in a situation that was common in the desktop computer industry circa 1976 to 1985, when everyone had to purchase the operating system as a separate cost item. That way, there will be a level playing field for everyone in the OS industry, and whoever can be successful in terms of price and ease of use will win hands down.
Also, given the fact this case will be appealled to the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC almost immediately, not to mention finally ending up in the US Supreme Court, don't expect a conclusion to this case until at least late 2001 to early 2002. And given the pace of change in "Internet time," who knows what will be the state of Microsoft in 2002, either.
>> And they will still but the decryption key in the player, where it will wait to be discovered by someone with a disassembler...
Finding the key is one thing, but decrypting a 128-bit key is QUITE something else.
You'll need extremely serious computing power just to consider decrypting something encoded with 128-bit encryption.
Given the increasing popularity of Linux, and centralized repository of GPL'd files and source code will be a HUGE boon for Linux itself.
That way, Linux users won't have to hunt all over the 'Net TRYING to find the files they want. This is going to be more critical with the release of the Linux 2.4.x kernel the end of this year with its increasing support for USB (and eventually IEEE-1394) devices.
Complain all you want about Microsoft, but the fact that MS has a very good download library makes it relatively easy to do things like patches and upgrades.
I think Freshmeat should be converted to this, with FTP servers directly connected to the Freshmeat HTTP server for easy downloads.
Folks,
People have been converting old airplanes to living quarters for quite some time.
I've read of DC-4/DC-6/DC-7 conversions to living space, along with some old 737's done the same way for a number of years.
Ben,
I agree 100%! (^_^)
People forget that we're talking files that are so big that even WITH broadband Internet access it'll take MANY hours just to download.
Besides, discs are quite inexpensive. Places like Reel.com and other online DVD retailers can sell you a DVD movie for very, very cheap, so the incentive to make a pirated copy is NOT there.
I think the simple solution is to just up the encryption level on the CSS to 128 bits. At 128-bit encryption, if you want to break the encryption better think multi-million dollar computer systems just to consider breaking the encryption.
I find it very surprising that the DVD encryption only used a 40-bit scheme. The problem is that anyone with a decently fast DESKTOP computer (e.g., Pentium III 550 MHz or Athlon 500 MHz minimum) could break the 40-bit scheme pretty quickly.
I think what will happen is that the DVD standards people will probably modify the encryption scheme to 128 bits, and believe me, to break 128-bit encryption you'll need hardware that is WAY, WAY beyond the expense of 99% of computer users nowadays. We're talking a multi-million dollar supercomputer or a HUGE Beowulf cluster (maybe over 600 machines in the cluster, and we're talking ones using the Alpha CPU) just to even consider breaking 128-bit encryption.
I won't be surprised that the modification of CSS to 128-bit encryption happens in the next year or so.
I have this feeling that ATI is incorporating Linux support so they could include display drivers with the soon-to-be-released Corel Linux.
;-)
ATI may not have the fastest board, but once the Rage Fury MAXX with the double Rage Fury graphics chip setup is available, the first one that can write an Linux OpenGL driver to takes advantage of the Serial Line Interleave (SLI) mode of the Rage Fury MAXX is going to be very popular very quickly.
Wrong.
Once CPU's go past 700 MHz in speed, the current PC100 and PC133 SDRAMs will become the big bottlenecks if you have to process very large graphics and database files. Remember, hard drive speed bottlenecks have been alleviated with ATA-66 IDE and SCSI Ultra-Wide and Ultra2-Wide technology, and graphics cards are also not the bottlenecks either (thanks to the work of nVidia, Matrox, ATI and S3).
This why things like Rambus DRAM and attempts to get SDRAM to go even faster than 133 MHz are being developed.
I think the problem with most software MPEG-2 decoders is that they DON'T take advantage of the CPU multimedia extensions like the Pentium III SSE or the Athlon enhanced 3DNow!
I'd wish someone would write one that does use SSE or 3DNow!, because both of these extensions are well-suited for more efficient MPEG-2 video decoding.
Folks,
At 1-meter resolution, it's still very useful for intelligence gathering. For one thing, at that resolution, details of buildings, manufacturing plants, airports, shipping docks, etc. stand out very clearly. 1-meter resolution is clear enough to see whether a missile silo is open or not, too.
I'm sure that the major networks will use Ikonos to find the fixed military installations of the Iranians in the Persian Gulf (remember, ABC News was able to get SPOT imagery at 10-meter resolution that still showed clearly the anti-shipping missile launchers in Iran).
However, Ikonos still takes time to process the 1-meter resolution image. Our latest spysats can probably resolve down to around 50 millimeter (around 2 inch) resolution, and will broadcast those pictures digitally in REAL time.
The passing of Akio Morita is truly the passing of a man who almost single-handedly changed the world of consumer electronics.
From the development of the first successful transistor radio, the Trinitron tube TV, and so on to the co-development of the Compact Disc, Sony under the guidance of Morita was one of the few companies most visibly responsible for raising Japan out of the ashes of World War II to economic prominence today. Morita did such a masterful salesmenship job for Sony that when Sony announced their PlayStation game console, it literally became almost overnight the #1 gaming platform.
If I were to list the top 10 industrialists of the 20th Century, Akio Morita belongs in this esteemed company.
If you're doing a from-scratch installation of any operating system (e.g., there's no partition defined on a hard drive), the installation of at least a workable Windows 98 installation takes about 40 minutes from start to finish if you boot directly from the OEM or full package Windows 98 CD-ROM disk. About 40% of that time is wasted doing a high-level formatting of the hard drive.
If you know how to create the Windows 98 OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK) setup boot diskette, the from-scratch installation I mentioned above takes about 14 minutes less, because you don't waste your time with a high-level format of the entire hard drive.
Getting RedHat or Caldera Linux onto a hard drive is easy, but configuring the OS so it functions to something resembling Windows 98's graphical interface using Gnome or KDE is going to take quite a bit longer. Given that most graphics cards have Windows 98 drivers, taking advantage of the graphics card's capabilities is pretty easy to do.
In short, my big disappointment with Linux is the fact configuring the OS is still quite complicated unless you have a good working knowledge of UNIX itself. Now we know why Linux Torvalds is working on the Linux 2.4.x kernel, which will have Plug-and-Play like installation of drivers and other hardware support.
Tino,
If you system hard drive has no partitions on it and if your computer can boot directly from a CD-ROM drive (either ATAPI 1.2 compatible IDE or SCSI connected to Adaptec host adapter), you can literally install the full or OEM installation version of Windows 98 directly from a CD-ROM boot. Try THAT with Linux.
I think the BEST thing about Windows 98 is the fact Microsoft _has_ heard the complaints about Windows 95 installation and has done something about it. On most modern computers, I can have Windows 98 installed and running in about 45 minutes. If you're not used to UNIX, installing Linux will take at least twice as long.
Fortunately, installing the OEM version of Windows 98 is not the painful experience that some people make it out to be.
Just as long as your hardware is on the Windows Hardware Compatibility List, installation should go fairly easily. Remember, the Windows 98 CD-ROM disk is self-booting, so if your system can boot from an ATAPI 1.2-compliant IDE CD-ROM drive or a SCSI CD-ROM drive attached to an Adaptec host adapter, the installation actually is pretty automatic.
Once you get Windows 98 installed, create an emergency boot disk, and copy FORMAT.COM from the \windows\command directory onto the disk. Unlike the older emergency boot disks for Windows 95, the Windows 98 Emergency Boot Disk DOES load the appropriate CD-ROM drivers, so you can actually do a full reload of Windows 98 in case of a major system crash.
Jon,
I have news for you--this is NOT the first time in human history where technological change turned the world upside down and caused all kinds of headaches.
Ever heard of the Rennaissance? The development during that period of the metal movable-type printing press by one Johannes Gutenberg circa 1453 caused in the 30 years afterward a knowledge revolution that turned Europe upside down, because it drastically reduced the cost of the transmission of information, namely that you could print thousands of copies of the same book.
The result was quite obvious--now that people could read the writings of the Church, they discovered that many Church writings often contradicted each other. One person, Martin Luther, printed his famous "Ninety-Five Theses" and had it posted in several places in Europe. The rest, they say, is history.
I find the view of the Luddites to in the end just be a bunch of sour grapes. They don't understand how horrible human existance was before this century, before modern medicine allows human lifespan to reach over 73 years on average. You were lucky if you could live till 50 even as recently as 1900.
If the rumor stated by Apple Insider is true, then Apple has finally addressed my biggest gripe about the iMac, namely the shortage of RAM and too small a hard drive.
With 64 to 128 MB of RAM and a 10 GB or larger hard drive, not to mention the incorporation of the ATI Rage 128 chipset, this means the new "Kihei" iMac's will finally have the computing power that will satisfy even demanding users. It'll be interesting to see how much Apple will price this machine.