Better players exist today. They have more features, more codecs to choose from, run faster, etc. The problem is that most people just won't bother to go and download another movie player if they got one with the OS. So by MS bundling the media player with the OS the create an incentive for sites _producing_ media to use their format. This opens a revenue stream to Microsoft that would not be available to them if people did not have WMP on their machines.
This is exactly what happened with IE vs Netscape. Microsoft have a monopoly on the desktop, so when the desktop had IE on it, why bother going to look for Netscape? And that's why when MS bundle something, it's different than when Red Hat or Apple bundle something - Microsoft have an effective monopoly in one area (desktop computing)
You can't win this fight by innovation alone. You could write the best media player in the world, but then you'd also have to give away the streaming servers, technical support, etc. And you have to market all of that to the content producers / hosts. That all costs money. Do you have a couple of mill to blow 'innovating'?
I see a lot of people advising that you leave your password in your will. This is retarted! For starters, every time you change your passwords, you have to redo your will and have it witnessed again - that's not sensible.
Rather keep your details separate to your will, but in your will advise people how to get to them. A safe deposit box at a bank, etc.
It seems to me that they have taken some action besides just grandstanding. They have resurrected the x86 version and added several interesting features--containers, DTrace, and ZFS, for example--that are available today in beta versions of Solaris 10.
Did I miss something ? I thought that ZFS wasn't available in the beta stuff yet ?
Sun are in a hole. At the moment, they're writing to their enterprise customers asking that they (their customers) contact their ISV's and request software for Solaris x86. This is a bloody dangerous thing to do and could cost a lot of people in a lot of companies their jobs in the medium term.
Think about it - 10 of your customers (and you only have 20 or 30) phone and ask for your app on Solaris x86. They may be doing this because they genuinely want it, or more likely because they want to keep in Sun's good books and use this favour for improved discounts down the road. So you hire some new developers, move some existing developers from your Linux / Solaris on SPARC port and get going on the x86 port. You bring it to market and NO-ONE buys! So you lay off the extra people you hired, you lay off a couple more people because your profits are in the shitter because of the development commitment you made, and you hire off some more people just because redundancies always spawn more redundancies.
And all this because Sun are trying to make a grassroots movement where there isn't one!
Dell seem to make good money off of Linux as well, supporting both RHEL and SLES on their server lines and their N models of desktops.
Sun are in a bad place at the moment, and Solaris 10 x86 HAS to succeed for them to make it through the next 3 years. But they still sell a lot of Red Hat, despite their rants about it.
Red Hat have some problems. Their pricing is high for the service they deliver, their products are buggy or incomplete in many cases (config tools, etc.) and they're not great with release dates.
Novell have a good product in SLES, but they're an unknown in the Open Source world - we don't know how they will behave towards the community yet. Dell's recent endorsement may or may not make a difference there.
Overall, none of the big players are really doing anything interesting enough to bump stock prices at the moment. IBM are about the most visible to the financial corps, and they're doing a little bit of interesting stuff.
There is a weird problem in my house where my computer monitor gets lines scrolling across it. I've tried different monitors, plugging monitor into a disconnected UPS instead of the mains, the works. The only thing that works for me is an LCD, but that doesn't give good colour.
I really hope this is as good as the review makes it out to be!
This is what REALLY fucks me off about PHP. Today I _have_ to upgrade - I have no choice as some of my hosted customers will be using vulnerable apps.
The problem is that during point releases, they change functionality so you're stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea - fail to upgrade and your server gets owned, but if you do upgrade you break customer applications and lose business.
PHP as a development platform might be great (although, you could argue that point too!) but as a platform to support for customers it's a steaming pile of shite!
That's flat out unfair - Siemens fucked up the passport office upgrade all by themselves and you do them a disservice by lumping that fuckup in with all of EDS'
The argument from Microsoft though, is that as people sign up to Free Trade agreements, or are forced to sign up to certain WTO treaties, they _HAVE_ to care about american IP, and they _HAVE_ to enforce it.
This is one of the reasons that India is no longer allowed to manufacture generic versions of certain drugs anymore, despite the fact that these were saving lives daily!
No, I'm saying that for a lot of people, their monthly internet costs are about the same as the repayments on a dealer approved second hand car (thing 18 month old, low milage here).
If you had to choose between a decent car, and an Internet connection, which would you buy ?
Stop assuming that the whole world is just like the little rock you live under!
Any random person can buy / import computer equipment. Even in poorer countries in Africa, many people have decent hardware.
ONLY the state run / monopoly telecoms provider can provide bandwidth. and in many countries, they will ONLY provide dialup internet access. No satellite - no ADSL - no cable. This is reality:)
So what, people who live in countries without DSL shouldn't want to / be able to play single player games even if they own sufficient hardware ? Sounds like crap to me!
Steam will always suck at launches of major new products because they won't have the capacity.
From Valve's perspective, why pay for the amount of servers, bandwidth and admins needed to provide launch day capacity, and have those servers sitting idle, costing money afterwards. Rather, take the hit of customers having a problem signing up initially.
Actually, what a 1st world country centric view you have. Many people I know have PC's at home, but only have Internet access from the office. That is how they post to/.:)
Even dialup is still VERY expensive in a lot of countries when you factor in ISP costs, minimum term contracts and metered phone calls. And believe it or not, millions of gamers live in these countries. So yeah, millions of gamers out in the cold sounds about right:)
Surely you'd never get away with a card as a passport - this wouldn't work for most other goverments and it would be a huge problem for anywhere that needs a visa.
I'm used to travelling on a South African passport. You need a visa for EVERYWHERE pretty much, and all of them are designed for book style passports. I'm not sure anywhere could cope with a card for issuing visas.
He's not backing down on ID cards - in reality, we're moving away from voluntary and towards compulsory!
He's backing down on the idea of a combined card to serve as a drivers licence, ID card, etc. Instead, we will have to carry separate cards for each of these functions.
And the clever thing is the way that he is forcing them on us. When you renew your passport you will be forced to get an ID card as well. And you will have to pay GBP35 for the privilege! If you don't want an ID card, the only way to avoid it is to not get a passport - this is a problem for many of us who have to travel on business.
First off, a short tale about Sun. I recently bought a V20z dual opteron rig from them. On two separate occasions, after logging HARDWARE support calls (faulty ram and faulty powersupply), they've phoned me within 2 days and asked why I'm running Linux on the machine, and have I considered running Solaris instead. On each occasion, I've told them that we have no interest in Solaris on x86, but they've gone on to give me a hard sell.
They may well be a company that supports Linux, but they're pretty damn schizo about it:)
I see a lot of posts asking why bother. What I'm more concerned about is how this could work ?
Ignoring the differences in the various RAW formats between manufacturers, what about differences between two cameras from the same manufacturer ? What causes that and would DNG cater for it ?
As an example, look at the Nikon D70 and the D100. Adobe had full support for the D100 with their ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) plugin. But when the D70 came out, we waited months for true compatibility with Photoshop (yeah, yeah, you could use the nikon supplied plugin, but that was worthless really).
I'm guessing Adobe want this because in order to keep selling Photoshop to photographers, they have to keep amending ACR everytime a new camera comes out. But can a fixed standard cater for everything that Canon and Nikon will be putting in their cameras, and want to store in the RAW files 2 years from now ?
A lot of companies don't patch for weeks after a Microsoft patch is out because Microsoft have messed up their patching in the past.
I've never had a FOSS patch break my SMTP server. I HAVE had a Microsoft patch stop SMTP services on my Exchange server.
I've never had a FOSS patch for something completely unrelated disable my home user's VPN's. I have with MS.
So because we have learnt that we can't trust their patches, we have to go through a fairly vigorous regression testing system before we can roll system wide. Once we're through testing, rollouts invariably have to be scheduled for a non-business period as many MS patches require server / workstations to be rebooted after applying them (although they are getting better with this).
So the simple answer - people don't rush out and patch because Microsoft fucked them for doing so in the past. You explain to your PHB that the guys in marketting can't get the urgent presentation mailed to the client because you applied a Microsoft patch.
That only covers a pretty old version of the MIDP, which doesn't help me. I need to build for CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2. Even Nokia's own app only runs on Linux:(
Up until last night, I was almost the same, except that I moved to a mac _from_ linux.
Last night I tried to port a Java application to my phone, and tonight I'll be installing Fedora Core under Virtual PC just to be able to write J2ME code.
Slashdot Mirror
mplayer on Mac OS X.
You're an engineer, right ? :D
Better players exist today. They have more features, more codecs to choose from, run faster, etc. The problem is that most people just won't bother to go and download another movie player if they got one with the OS. So by MS bundling the media player with the OS the create an incentive for sites _producing_ media to use their format. This opens a revenue stream to Microsoft that would not be available to them if people did not have WMP on their machines.
This is exactly what happened with IE vs Netscape. Microsoft have a monopoly on the desktop, so when the desktop had IE on it, why bother going to look for Netscape? And that's why when MS bundle something, it's different than when Red Hat or Apple bundle something - Microsoft have an effective monopoly in one area (desktop computing)
You can't win this fight by innovation alone. You could write the best media player in the world, but then you'd also have to give away the streaming servers, technical support, etc. And you have to market all of that to the content producers / hosts. That all costs money. Do you have a couple of mill to blow 'innovating'?
I see a lot of people advising that you leave your password in your will. This is retarted! For starters, every time you change your passwords, you have to redo your will and have it witnessed again - that's not sensible.
Rather keep your details separate to your will, but in your will advise people how to get to them. A safe deposit box at a bank, etc.
From TFA:
It seems to me that they have taken some action besides just grandstanding. They have resurrected the x86 version and added several interesting features--containers, DTrace, and ZFS, for example--that are available today in beta versions of Solaris 10.
Did I miss something ? I thought that ZFS wasn't available in the beta stuff yet ?
Sun are in a hole. At the moment, they're writing to their enterprise customers asking that they (their customers) contact their ISV's and request software for Solaris x86. This is a bloody dangerous thing to do and could cost a lot of people in a lot of companies their jobs in the medium term.
Think about it - 10 of your customers (and you only have 20 or 30) phone and ask for your app on Solaris x86. They may be doing this because they genuinely want it, or more likely because they want to keep in Sun's good books and use this favour for improved discounts down the road. So you hire some new developers, move some existing developers from your Linux / Solaris on SPARC port and get going on the x86 port. You bring it to market and NO-ONE buys! So you lay off the extra people you hired, you lay off a couple more people because your profits are in the shitter because of the development commitment you made, and you hire off some more people just because redundancies always spawn more redundancies. And all this because Sun are trying to make a grassroots movement where there isn't one!
Dell seem to make good money off of Linux as well, supporting both RHEL and SLES on their server lines and their N models of desktops.
Sun are in a bad place at the moment, and Solaris 10 x86 HAS to succeed for them to make it through the next 3 years. But they still sell a lot of Red Hat, despite their rants about it.
Red Hat have some problems. Their pricing is high for the service they deliver, their products are buggy or incomplete in many cases (config tools, etc.) and they're not great with release dates.
Novell have a good product in SLES, but they're an unknown in the Open Source world - we don't know how they will behave towards the community yet. Dell's recent endorsement may or may not make a difference there.
Overall, none of the big players are really doing anything interesting enough to bump stock prices at the moment. IBM are about the most visible to the financial corps, and they're doing a little bit of interesting stuff.
There is a weird problem in my house where my computer monitor gets lines scrolling across it. I've tried different monitors, plugging monitor into a disconnected UPS instead of the mains, the works. The only thing that works for me is an LCD, but that doesn't give good colour.
I really hope this is as good as the review makes it out to be!
This is what REALLY fucks me off about PHP. Today I _have_ to upgrade - I have no choice as some of my hosted customers will be using vulnerable apps.
The problem is that during point releases, they change functionality so you're stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea - fail to upgrade and your server gets owned, but if you do upgrade you break customer applications and lose business.
PHP as a development platform might be great (although, you could argue that point too!) but as a platform to support for customers it's a steaming pile of shite!
Hmmm... Ok, so what about people with double barreled surnames ? Or things like Foo van der Bar ?
Should that become
foo.van.der.bar ?
How do you dilineate first name from surnage ?
In the case of
foo.van.der.bar foo is the first name, and the last 3 parts are the last name
With
st.john.bar, St John is the first name
If it's going to be global, and it's going to be useful, surely there should be some way of identifying these parts of a name ?
That's flat out unfair - Siemens fucked up the passport office upgrade all by themselves and you do them a disservice by lumping that fuckup in with all of EDS'
The argument from Microsoft though, is that as people sign up to Free Trade agreements, or are forced to sign up to certain WTO treaties, they _HAVE_ to care about american IP, and they _HAVE_ to enforce it.
This is one of the reasons that India is no longer allowed to manufacture generic versions of certain drugs anymore, despite the fact that these were saving lives daily!
No, I'm saying that for a lot of people, their monthly internet costs are about the same as the repayments on a dealer approved second hand car (thing 18 month old, low milage here).
If you had to choose between a decent car, and an Internet connection, which would you buy ?
Stop assuming that the whole world is just like the little rock you live under!
Any random person can buy / import computer equipment. Even in poorer countries in Africa, many people have decent hardware.
:)
ONLY the state run / monopoly telecoms provider can provide bandwidth. and in many countries, they will ONLY provide dialup internet access. No satellite - no ADSL - no cable. This is reality
So what, people who live in countries without DSL shouldn't want to / be able to play single player games even if they own sufficient hardware ? Sounds like crap to me!
Steam will always suck at launches of major new products because they won't have the capacity.
From Valve's perspective, why pay for the amount of servers, bandwidth and admins needed to provide launch day capacity, and have those servers sitting idle, costing money afterwards. Rather, take the hit of customers having a problem signing up initially.
Actually, what a 1st world country centric view you have. Many people I know have PC's at home, but only have Internet access from the office. That is how they post to /. :)
:)
Even dialup is still VERY expensive in a lot of countries when you factor in ISP costs, minimum term contracts and metered phone calls. And believe it or not, millions of gamers live in these countries. So yeah, millions of gamers out in the cold sounds about right
The patent was only granted on August 24 2004, so they are suing quite quickly after receiving it.
The fact that amazon has been doing this for ages doesn't really mean anything, as without the patent, you have no basis for suit.
Also, the patent was applied for in 1997, so Amazon may not be able to claim prior art to date of filing.
Surely you'd never get away with a card as a passport - this wouldn't work for most other goverments and it would be a huge problem for anywhere that needs a visa.
I'm used to travelling on a South African passport. You need a visa for EVERYWHERE pretty much, and all of them are designed for book style passports. I'm not sure anywhere could cope with a card for issuing visas.
He's not backing down on ID cards - in reality, we're moving away from voluntary and towards compulsory!
He's backing down on the idea of a combined card to serve as a drivers licence, ID card, etc. Instead, we will have to carry separate cards for each of these functions.
And the clever thing is the way that he is forcing them on us. When you renew your passport you will be forced to get an ID card as well. And you will have to pay GBP35 for the privilege! If you don't want an ID card, the only way to avoid it is to not get a passport - this is a problem for many of us who have to travel on business.
100% of the music on my iPod is ripped from my own CDs. I own about 120 CDs, but haven't bought any since my RIAA boycott started 1.5 years ago.
So I'm not a thief, but I am a dip in sales figures for the RIAA
yeah, but he's hardly outside the umbrella if you're just watching him on your cell phone, is he ?
First off, a short tale about Sun. I recently bought a V20z dual opteron rig from them. On two separate occasions, after logging HARDWARE support calls (faulty ram and faulty powersupply), they've phoned me within 2 days and asked why I'm running Linux on the machine, and have I considered running Solaris instead. On each occasion, I've told them that we have no interest in Solaris on x86, but they've gone on to give me a hard sell.
:)
They may well be a company that supports Linux, but they're pretty damn schizo about it
I see a lot of posts asking why bother. What I'm more concerned about is how this could work ?
Ignoring the differences in the various RAW formats between manufacturers, what about differences between two cameras from the same manufacturer ? What causes that and would DNG cater for it ?
As an example, look at the Nikon D70 and the D100. Adobe had full support for the D100 with their ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) plugin. But when the D70 came out, we waited months for true compatibility with Photoshop (yeah, yeah, you could use the nikon supplied plugin, but that was worthless really).
I'm guessing Adobe want this because in order to keep selling Photoshop to photographers, they have to keep amending ACR everytime a new camera comes out. But can a fixed standard cater for everything that Canon and Nikon will be putting in their cameras, and want to store in the RAW files 2 years from now ?
A lot of companies don't patch for weeks after a Microsoft patch is out because Microsoft have messed up their patching in the past.
I've never had a FOSS patch break my SMTP server. I HAVE had a Microsoft patch stop SMTP services on my Exchange server.
I've never had a FOSS patch for something completely unrelated disable my home user's VPN's. I have with MS.
So because we have learnt that we can't trust their patches, we have to go through a fairly vigorous regression testing system before we can roll system wide. Once we're through testing, rollouts invariably have to be scheduled for a non-business period as many MS patches require server / workstations to be rebooted after applying them (although they are getting better with this).
So the simple answer - people don't rush out and patch because Microsoft fucked them for doing so in the past. You explain to your PHB that the guys in marketting can't get the urgent presentation mailed to the client because you applied a Microsoft patch.
That only covers a pretty old version of the MIDP, which doesn't help me. I need to build for CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2. Even Nokia's own app only runs on Linux :(
Up until last night, I was almost the same, except that I moved to a mac _from_ linux.
Last night I tried to port a Java application to my phone, and tonight I'll be installing Fedora Core under Virtual PC just to be able to write J2ME code.
Bah!