You've got it exactly, Windows right now and probably the first couple of releases will run just fine on normal hardware but how long will it be before the hardware manufactures stop running two product lines, one secure and one open? And once that happens why would Microsoft continue to provide a version that runs on unsecure hardware?
I think the big question is why would consumers choose to buy DRM-crippled Windows versus non DRM-crippled Windows? Who, exactly, would want to buy hardware or an OS that gives them less control over their machine than they have now? And if people don't buy into Microsoft's scheme in sufficient numbers, the non-crippled version of Windows and hardware will quickly fade away - unless Microsoft wants to cut their own throats, which seems unlikely.
Shouldn't it say, be a meat eater, or choose not to eat? I mean, a meat eater can eat everything a vegitarian can eat, but a vegitarian cannot eat everything a meat eater can eat.
I think the subject's oddly-chosen analogy means that one can choose to use DRM-crippled Windows and have less choices than before ("being a vegetarian") or one can try and use Windows without DRM which allows one to do even less ("eating nothing at all"). Or something like that.
Microsoft is and should be trying to reduce the clutter of the number of different pieces of hardware that need to be supported. Look at Linux - it can't keep up with all the crap HW coming on the market from all over the place. Please do we really need 100's of cards, USB devices and etc. NO and where does it fall to support that in the OS lots of the time.
Reducing hardware support simply requires standards. If hardware makers can develop an open standard for whatever hardware they're selling and implement it, there should be no problem for Windows, Linux or whoever to support it. My mouse, keyboard, game controller and external hard drives follow the USB standard and work just fine across OSes. My printer follows the PostScript language standard and should work find everywhere (though, admittedly, I haven't tried it with Windows), my CDROM and hard drives follow various bits of the IDE standard and have no trouble working.
One doesn't have to be locked down to a console-like PC platform to solve hard compatibility problems if hardware venders would simply make and adhere to open standards for communication. That's what we really need.
The software industry was well entrenched even without Bill's help. Plus, one ALWAYS pays. Except for people who are working on "commercial" OSS, what do these programmers working on "other" OSS projects do to pay the bills. The vast majority of them write software that costs money. A "free" software market can't support itself, it is way to resource intensive. It has to be buoyed by something.
That "something" was typically hardware sales, software comissioned from software houses by customers or by in-house programming staff. And, to this day, that's where the majority of programming salaries come from. Eventually, customers accepted the notion that off-the-shelf software could do the job. But with the advent of off-the-shelf desktop PCs, the industry has successfully put forth the notion that off-the-shelf software is the only thing capable of doing the job on the desktop side of things.
Programmers will always get paid to solve problems, but the idea that customers can't see the source code and find their own solutions is a more recent, but obviously successful, development in the industry.
Singular apps like VisiCalc, WordStar, Lotus 123, dBase, Windows, PhotoShop et al helped to create what the software industry is now, which in turn has helped to create an environment in which open software could even exist.
Before there was a software industry, software was effectively free from hardware manufacturers. And, one typically received the source code along with it. Only with the unbundling and charging for software did a seperate industry for it come about - eventually necessitating the creation of an "open source" movement. So, in a sense, open software has existed before the industry itself. But Bill Gates and the industry has become entrenched to the point that the notion of software one doesn't have to pay for seems novel.
If you mean "electric computer", the Colossus is certainly one of the first, though I recall experiments in electrostatic computers that predate it (the names of which escape me). But, of course, the works of Babbage in non-electric computers predate the Colossus. And works in mechanical computing predate Babbage going all the way back to the abacus.
The Colossus was an important achievement. But, like many inventions, it was not without predecessors in some form or another.
That's why you upgrade the firmware yourself to remove the region-coding. I'm guessing this firmware upgrade will (ofcourse) re-lock the drive.
DeCSS will also bypass region coding automagically, for those outside of DMCA-burdened regimes. It's quite nice to watch legally-purchased DVDs from any region without all the hassle.
...so long as the feds are able to "extract" the necessary keys and passwords from whoever is involved in the communication. If such data isn't forthcoming, it's easier than ever for the feds to label one a "material witness" and keep them imprisoned for as long as it takes. But that's life in the home of the free...
it might have been the only option back in the UUCP days when live IP connectivity was limited, but now, IRC and P2P services seem to do the job quite well.
They do, for a very limited subset of "quite well". With a decent binary-carrying Usenet server (all of which are likely to require a paid account), you have a fighting chance of actually getting whatever it is that's posted without having to struggle with downloading from a dozen "peers" with low bandwidth or incomplete files. And some paid Usenet services even do the uudecoding/yENCing/etc. for you, which makes file downloading frighteningly easy.
Not hardly. Unlike video players, which have a high degree of physical incompatibility, audio formats only require sufficient processing power and the proper software to handle a new audio format. Considering vorbis already comes standard with winamp, xmms and others, there's no reason anyone should have problems playing them on the computer side. And, once sufficient demand is demonstrated on the portable side, vorbis support should arrive there as well - especially since portable processing power is getting cheaper all the time.
mp3 and ogg is not an either/or proposition any more than image formats are jpeg/png/gif only.
That's true, but for the average user, Ogg vorbis has no advantage over mp3. All most people care about is whether it costrs them money. mp3 is free for most users so what benefit does this strange sounding [ogg] format give?
The one big advantage is that ogg encoders are free for both users and developers. Unlike LAME, whose use requires a patent license in some countries (per their web site), anyone can build ogg encoder/decoder support into their products free of charge. And by making ogg vorbis encoders ubiquitous, people can rip their own music with a lot less hassle.
With a broadband connection and a decent speed burner...MOST people could have the song downloaded and burned to a CD BEFORE you get your keys in the ignition.
That's just silly. AAC is still a lossy format and your broadband connection can't hope to match the bandwidth of a trunk full of CDs (though the latency is much better). Apple's service offers convenience, but it's not the same as having the actual disc.
It is my opinion that Yahoo allows junk mail, in fact, dumps it heavily on it's customers so that they will buy a premium service.
I've had Yahoo's premium email service. It was, in fact, a mostly spam-free experience. Unfortunately for me, Yahoo decided to drop my service yet continue to charge me for six months afterward - in spite of numerous complaints to their woefully unhelpful "help" site (FYI, Yahoo has no centralized "help" email address or toll-free phone number). My credit card company reversed all the charges, naturally, but finally had to get me a new number to make the charges stop.
Yahoo might offer spam free premium email, but I don't think it's worth the price:(
As far it losing out on the server side, most server side projects that I know of currently in development are Linux or BSD as thier base, not Windows, due to the high price of dealing with Redmond.
Here's some non-anectotal info about where the server market is going. And it's not to Windows.
The term viral referes to the fact that the GPL spreads to whatever it touches.
A vaccine also spreads throughout your system, should you choose to take it. The key difference is that a virus will attempt to spread of its own accord but a vaccine requires the conscious effort of the user to spread. You can't "accidentally" include GPLed code in your programs, nor will GPLed programs intentionally write GPLed code into your programs.
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I think the big question is why would consumers choose to buy DRM-crippled Windows versus non DRM-crippled Windows? Who, exactly, would want to buy hardware or an OS that gives them less control over their machine than they have now? And if people don't buy into Microsoft's scheme in sufficient numbers, the non-crippled version of Windows and hardware will quickly fade away - unless Microsoft wants to cut their own throats, which seems unlikely.
I think the subject's oddly-chosen analogy means that one can choose to use DRM-crippled Windows and have less choices than before ("being a vegetarian") or one can try and use Windows without DRM which allows one to do even less ("eating nothing at all"). Or something like that.
It's not a very good analogy, really.
It seems /. has transformed "proof by anecdote" into something both "interesting" and "informative". Bravo.
Reducing hardware support simply requires standards. If hardware makers can develop an open standard for whatever hardware they're selling and implement it, there should be no problem for Windows, Linux or whoever to support it. My mouse, keyboard, game controller and external hard drives follow the USB standard and work just fine across OSes. My printer follows the PostScript language standard and should work find everywhere (though, admittedly, I haven't tried it with Windows), my CDROM and hard drives follow various bits of the IDE standard and have no trouble working.
One doesn't have to be locked down to a console-like PC platform to solve hard compatibility problems if hardware venders would simply make and adhere to open standards for communication. That's what we really need.
And like the Holy Grail, the creator has removed the original from circulation and made it impossible to find.
Other X11 systems should have a similar file for translations.
That "something" was typically hardware sales, software comissioned from software houses by customers or by in-house programming staff. And, to this day, that's where the majority of programming salaries come from. Eventually, customers accepted the notion that off-the-shelf software could do the job. But with the advent of off-the-shelf desktop PCs, the industry has successfully put forth the notion that off-the-shelf software is the only thing capable of doing the job on the desktop side of things.
Programmers will always get paid to solve problems, but the idea that customers can't see the source code and find their own solutions is a more recent, but obviously successful, development in the industry.
Before there was a software industry, software was effectively free from hardware manufacturers. And, one typically received the source code along with it. Only with the unbundling and charging for software did a seperate industry for it come about - eventually necessitating the creation of an "open source" movement. So, in a sense, open software has existed before the industry itself. But Bill Gates and the industry has become entrenched to the point that the notion of software one doesn't have to pay for seems novel.
The Software Industry, dead at 53. Truly an american icon...
In 1993, I was using X11.
Good thing we have Victor Newman to save us from the terror of Colossus :)
(I noticed the lack of AC posting too. Fortunately, mods usually ignore offtopic stuff posted at 1).
The Colossus was an important achievement. But, like many inventions, it was not without predecessors in some form or another.
DeCSS will also bypass region coding automagically, for those outside of DMCA-burdened regimes. It's quite nice to watch legally-purchased DVDs from any region without all the hassle.
...so long as the feds are able to "extract" the necessary keys and passwords from whoever is involved in the communication. If such data isn't forthcoming, it's easier than ever for the feds to label one a "material witness" and keep them imprisoned for as long as it takes. But that's life in the home of the free...
They do, for a very limited subset of "quite well". With a decent binary-carrying Usenet server (all of which are likely to require a paid account), you have a fighting chance of actually getting whatever it is that's posted without having to struggle with downloading from a dozen "peers" with low bandwidth or incomplete files. And some paid Usenet services even do the uudecoding/yENCing/etc. for you, which makes file downloading frighteningly easy.
For now, it does. But Vorbis support is coming Real Soon Now (scroll to the bottom). Not too shabby for a 2 year old codec.
Not hardly. Unlike video players, which have a high degree of physical incompatibility, audio formats only require sufficient processing power and the proper software to handle a new audio format. Considering vorbis already comes standard with winamp, xmms and others, there's no reason anyone should have problems playing them on the computer side. And, once sufficient demand is demonstrated on the portable side, vorbis support should arrive there as well - especially since portable processing power is getting cheaper all the time.
mp3 and ogg is not an either/or proposition any more than image formats are jpeg/png/gif only.
The one big advantage is that ogg encoders are free for both users and developers. Unlike LAME, whose use requires a patent license in some countries (per their web site), anyone can build ogg encoder/decoder support into their products free of charge. And by making ogg vorbis encoders ubiquitous, people can rip their own music with a lot less hassle.
Introducing your next player. It's a pretty nifty little device, actually, and upgradable to boot.
That's just silly. AAC is still a lossy format and your broadband connection can't hope to match the bandwidth of a trunk full of CDs (though the latency is much better). Apple's service offers convenience, but it's not the same as having the actual disc.
I've had Yahoo's premium email service. It was, in fact, a mostly spam-free experience. Unfortunately for me, Yahoo decided to drop my service yet continue to charge me for six months afterward - in spite of numerous complaints to their woefully unhelpful "help" site (FYI, Yahoo has no centralized "help" email address or toll-free phone number). My credit card company reversed all the charges, naturally, but finally had to get me a new number to make the charges stop.
Yahoo might offer spam free premium email, but I don't think it's worth the price :(
Here's some non-anectotal info about where the server market is going. And it's not to Windows.
A vaccine also spreads throughout your system, should you choose to take it. The key difference is that a virus will attempt to spread of its own accord but a vaccine requires the conscious effort of the user to spread. You can't "accidentally" include GPLed code in your programs, nor will GPLed programs intentionally write GPLed code into your programs.
But turds are the industry standard. Besides, a billion flies can't be wrong...
I hear the final version of Mozilla Calender will feature a Preferences->Rage option...