To put my point bluntly, Microsoft was the target of antitrust prosecution precisely because it was an enormously successful company. Regardless of whether you agree with MS's tactics, it has bought out or buried an impressive list of rivals over the past two decades.
I would contest this point slightly. Microsoft is the target of antitrust prosecution because they were enormously successful, and the continual arrogance of their executives who believed they could do no wrong. The moment Microsoft decided they couldn't win the browser war on merit alone and used Microsoft Windows to piggyback their way into people computers was the moment they stopped being merely successful and started acting as a truely abusive monopoly. To make things worse, Microsoft probably would've beat Netscape anyway, without resorting to such dirty tricks. The same arrogance through the first trial is what lost it for them, and why such extreme measures were proposed for the remedy of the court. Their continual unwillingness to bend their position to suit the direction of the wind will break them at some point, it's all a matter of when.
The idea that they can do no wrong is nothing new within Microsoft. Especially if you consider, that officially, there are no bugs in Microsoft programs, only issues. Even the enormous flop, Microsoft Bob is not officially called a failure, only 'ahead of it's time'. Otherwise, they push and push the product on consumers until it's the standard and no other real alternatives exist. I fear WinAMP and RealPlayer will be the next targets with Windows Media Player 7/8.
You know, if the Gnome group and the KDE group sat down together and decided to do everything they could do to make interoperability between them a top priority, I don't think anything or anyone could stop them. I think diversity is a wonderful thing, but not when a user is forced to make a potentially incorrect decision on which 'desktop environment' to use. I would love to see QT/KDE apps completely at home on a Gnome-based system and for GTK/Gnome apps to seamlessly fit into a KDE system. For all their technical differences, they're functionally similar. KDE has a very functionally complete HTML browser, whereas Gnome doesn't, and is betting on the Gecko engine from the Mozilla project. There's a lot of potentally unneeded duplication here, and it's not the developers who are suffering -- it's users that may be considering trying out a non-Windows system for the first time that are harmed.
Most purebred animals do end up that way. Either incredibly stupid, or with horrible genetic flaws that shorten or degrade their life substancially. The gene pool for these animals is getting incredibly small since no one wants to breed mixture animals, they're usually neutered and owned by middle-class families that could never afford to care for multiple offspring from the pet. You have German Shepard dogs that are renowned for the inteligence and power, that have severe hip and joint problems within three to five years after birth. Stupid inattentive cats like those Persians that everyone likes to dress up.
Usually mongrels (dog or cat) are a better choice, if for no other reason that the odds may be in the pet's favor to have a long and healthy life. You might not end up with an award winning pet, but you should have a friend and companion that you can share many, many years with.
I suppose you don't do backups on DAT tapes? DAT and DLT are the two most standard, reliable ways to make backups. And DDS-4 (20GB/40GB DAT) media currently cost about $30ea, despite the fact there doesn't seem to be any real reason why it should be so expensive.
In Canada, such a levy was recently enacted, granting a these organizations at $0.21/unit levy on each unit. In exchange for this levy, Canadians now have the right to make private copies of copyrighted work for personal use without infringing copyright. On paper, the general public gained a lot, but in reality, no one ever really charged someone with copyright infringement for making copies for personal use. In reality the only thing the recording industry lost was the ability to claim that making a copy of your friend's CD is illegal.
I don't know where you're getting your information from, but from what I can tell, the levy was indeed passed, and recently was increased to $0.21/unit for 2001 up from $0.052/unit in 2000 for data CD-Rs. And $0.77/unit (up from $0.608/unit) for audio CD-Rs (despite the fact that the music industry gets a big cut from them because of the serialization technology in those discs) and MD. DAT, Video cassettes, Hard drives, Microcassettes, and MP3 players thankfully still are unlevied.
God, they only highlight the idiot Linux-preachers. This guy is wrong. MS is kicking everyone's ass in the area of market share and actually producing revenues (ha! look at va linux and red hat).
Now, I have to say that I'm confused. No where in what I wrote did I praise Linux, nor did I even imply that Microsoft's market share was being threatened. Being first to market is usually the place you don't want to be, unless you're damn sure your product can not be one-upped by your competitor. Take Novell NDS versus Microsoft Active Directory, for example. Novell NDS is more mature, more flexible, and from an administrative stand point, easier to administer. Microsoft Active Directory, on the other hand, is a first generation product that was merely layered over the traditional NT security model. While, this makes NDS technically better than Active Directory, you'll likely find Active Directory being deployed more often than NDS. Why? Because Active Directory ties itself closer to Windows and gives you implicit features that aren't present with NDS (Although with NDS4NT/NDS Corporate Edition/Novell Account Management/whatever Novell names it this week, this isn't really an issue, either).
WinNT/2000, Netware, Linux, [your favorite OS here], etc all have their strengths and weaknesses. Linux (and all other unix-style systems) make excellent web servers. Netware excells at file and printer serving. NT/2000 offers some of the best office groupware. You won't find me using Linux blindly when an NT server would work better.
Besides, I'm a cynic by nature. It's practically instinctive for me to criticize, whether it be Microsoft, RedHat, Gnome, KDE, IBM, the Canadian federal government, or whatever pisses me off today.
AOL has by far more subscribers than any other online service, and the vast majority of those people are not accessing the "Internet", but are instead using it for AOL E-mail, AOL Instant Messaging, AOL chat rooms, AOL shopping and AOL bulletin boards.
No, I imagine most of them are using it more for Napster like everyone else on the Internet does. It seems that no matter how computer illiterate, everyone can seemingly figure out Napster despite it's quirks. Figuring out how to use their e-mail program or how to operate a web browser is really tough for them, but when it comes to Napster, it's no problem.
Let me give you some more specifics. In my opinion, one of the things Microsoft is good at is looking down the road a few years and talking about what that world is like. But sometimes, because it's so far away, the casual consumer doesn't understand what they're talking about because they've skipped a couple of years.
Now, I don't know how many people read Bill Gate's book, "The Road Ahead", but in there he predicted a number of things, such as the concept of the Internet would never take off, and that proprietary online services like the Microsoft Network would be much more popular, only relying on the Internet for e-mail. Just about the only vision that has come anywhere close to coming into being is the idea of a PC in [nearly] every home.
Microsoft has a consistent business strategy of waiting to see what their competitors do, watch them make the mistakes, and then release software that's a generation behind what their competitors are sporting, but tie it close enough to their other products that the other vendors' products aren't as worthwhile to use. With a few exceptions (Microsoft Bob), few Microsoft products have ever failed miserably due to the level of integration and marketing, although Microsoft still refuses to acknowledge that Bob was a failure (official company line is it was 'ahead of it's time').
And in the millions of peices of mail that go through the postal system, you think they'll know which ones carry terrorist information and which ones don't? Are we going to demand that the postal service open and read each and every mail? Encryption can be broken, it just takes a lot of equipement and possibly time. Besides, I believe even wiretap regulations require that two of the three involved parties give their consent (carrier, sender, recipient), and there are devices that are much closer to a wiretap than forcing all users to conduct their business in the open clear of the safety of encryption.
Currently, I tend to feel SAFER buying stuff online from trusted merchants with my credit card than giving it to someone who works in a store. Most online merchants destroy your credit card number after it's no longer needed, and keep only minimal records of it (4 first or last numbers). Compared to bricks-and-mortar shopping, where the store makes one or two copies for itself and one copy for you to lose, with 'customers' behind you that can look over your shoulder because of poor handling of the card, it makes me feel nervous. However, if you take away encryption from the equation, all bets are off, since a packet may travel through dozens of systems and routers before being recieved by the vendor you're trying to buy from.
How much freedom are you willing to sacrifice in order to gain safety? To me, the benefits that society gains from encryption far outweigh the evils that can be done with it. Besides the fact that if they're already criminals, do you think they'll have any qualms about using 'illegal' encryption products? You'll only stop stupid ones, and they're rarely the ones that do the most damage. I'm glad to be living in Canada on this point -- there's never been any plans to stop private citizens from using or exporting encryption, with the exception of those products imported from the United States that employed 'high-grade' encryption that was banned from export from the United States. Why do you suppose the OpenBSD project, which uses encryption where ever possible, is based in Canada?;-)
But stick NT in a box with controlled, well-tested hardware, controlled, well-tested software, and very limited I/O, and you're looking at a "five-nines" system.
The Microsoft 'five-nines' stuff is only valid for Windows 2000 server configurations from tier-one manufacturers (HP, Compaq, etc) with clustering so that there's at least one redundant server. They will not warrant a single server or home-built system in that way. Learn to read the fine print -- it's easier to find out how you're being screwed that way.
Despite the little 'five nines' posters in M$ colors that are up all over Los Angeles I don't think they're there yet - we should be making a 'three sixes' banner using the same colors and hanging them up around major urban areas - let the truth be known!
I don't think you need to use all those colours... One will suffice -- Blue.
It can only be good if people have the option to have the same GUI all around, everywhere. It reduces training costs at companies and the time people have to expend to learn what is, in the end, a simple tool.
That's not really true. Take the palm pilot for example. The hardest part of learning how to use the palm pilot is learning the writing method, everything else is quite intuitive despite not carrying a Microsoft-base GUI. And for hand-held, and other devices that would use an LCD display, I'd bet that most people would be better served by a highly tuned GUI that fits the device rather than the generic grey MSWindows UI. I really don't think a start button and Windows icons adds all that much to an embeded device built to serve a single purpose.
You touch on what is probably the most important danger of preventing reverse engineering. Most vendors, Microsoft included, would like nothing more than to lock users into their platform via undocumented protocols and formats or undocumented extensions to standard protocols. If reverse engineering ends up outlawed (at least in the U.S., thankfully I don't live there), the ability of a vendor to lock a customer into their solution becomes much greater, because they no longer have to provide better products than their competitors, but rather just enforce their lawsuits to make sure that a gradual migration to another platform/application is near impossible.
Under the DMCA and UCITA it could be quite legal for a program developer who integrates some 'intelectual property' (magic numbers, etc)into the databases that contain YOUR data could prevent a competitive company from importing or in any way using the data in that databse. Sounds nice and scary, doesn't it.
Openly published security precautions? OK, publish this:
don't store credit card info (destroy it after transaction clears)
don't store it
don't store it
don't store it
don't store it
You know, you'd think that this would be common sense. After all, the best way to protect your customers is not to keep any important data on network attached machines. I personally try to deal with online retailers who make their policy to only store your credit card number if you expliticly ask them to. But unfortunately, many other retailers (Amazon.com comes to mind) require a creditcard number as part of the account creation process, and once they have your CC number, they don't make it easy for you to get them to forget it (short of hoping their engine accepts the dummy/test VISA/MasterCard number 4111 1111 1111).
I know all this information they give about secure databases and SSL encrypted transactions are supposed to make the user feel more secure, but asking for a credit card number before even placing the order shouldn't make anyone feel confortable. Nor should the pushyness of Amazon's current business practices make anyone want to deal with them ("Oh, signing up for an account, well, we'll just turn on add the advertising, and allow us to share information with anyone we choose, and did we mention one-click(TM) purchasing is on by default?").
There are a number of companies out there that have this right, such as ebworld.com, and chapters.ca. They ask for credit card information during each and every transaction. Unforunately, it's not just the online world that's a little too lax with credit card precautions -- nearly any of the major gasoline stations in my area, will print your full credit card number on any and all receipts, etc. If you think about how easy it is to locate a credit card number in a normal person's trash, suddenly the danger of online transactions seems trivial.
Yeah, and these days, it's not too difficult to buy "video stabilizers" that remove Macrovision encoding, especially since a large number of older TVs have severe problems with the Macrovision scrambling of the sync. Then again, none of Macrovisions's products seem all that effective. When was the last time a CD protected with SafeDisc stopped anyone for very long.
Well, I would guess that there'll probably be a much easier way of doing it, involving VxDs and other kernel mode drivers that could be automated in such a way even the casual copiers could do it. As long as there's a way to get user code running at the same level as the operating system code that will be running the show with this DRM tactic, there'll be ways to capture the data before it makes it to the speakers.
Either way, it's a tough decision. A proprietary format that can only be played in Windows, costs money and only under the conditions that the copyright owners specify, or a well documented public format with no protection that I can stick in any of my computers or even my DVD player (or soon car CD player) and playback without a problem...
Okay, then you rip appart your speakers, and remove the actual speakers and solder on standard RCA jacks instead. As long as you keep the power down, you'll still be able to record it. There'll always be a weakest link somewhere that can be exploited. Either way, as the article says, they have to compete with the millions of protection-free MP3s, and sell controlled versions (probably at a lower bitrate) for $3.99/ea.
Honestly, why does everyone gripe about Sendmail. Yes, it has had it's problems, but the last exploitable sendmail bug I can find was 8.8.5 back in 1997. There was the exploit in 2000 that was caused by the Linux kernel bug, but you can't blame sendmail for that. BIND has had a much worse recent history, with the CERT publishing at least one advisory per year with multiple flaws in each one.
You'll find a real hesitance for distributors to use qmail or djbdns because even if they do find a bug (remotely exploitable or not), the only person who can 'bless' such changes to the code is D.J.B. himself, since his license prohibits binary OR source distribution of modified code. Debian found an unusual way around it via their dpkg system to download the original tar.gz, a diff, and then build the executable at install time, but for most companies this is unacceptable.
Paranoid or not, I HAVE had multiple failures on a RAID 5 array once. Mind you, it was the controller that failed and marked 2 of 4 drives in the array as down. There was no recovery. Besides, powering drives up and down induces stress on their mechanical systems, which greatly increases the chances of failure. Besides which, downtime and/or reduced performance because of a RAID array in a critical state isn't free, and costs both worker productivity and money to replace the dead drives.
And djbdns only implements a subset of what BIND 9.1.0 offers. Things like DNSSEC, have little to no hope of being implemented in djbdns because Mister Bernstein doesn't believe it to be of any use. It also has a rather nasty license policy:
You are permitted to distribute a precompiled djbdns package if
installing the package produces exactly the same files, in exactly the same locations, that a user would obtain by downloading, compiling, and installing dnscache-1.00.tar.gz or djbdns-1.01.tar.gz or djbdns-1.02.tar.gz or djbdns-1.03.tar.gz or djbdns-1.04.tar.gz;
the package behaves correctly, i.e., the same way as normal djbdns installations on all other systems; and
the package's creator warrants that he has made a good-faith attempt to ensure that the package behaves correctly.
It is not acceptable to have djbdns working differently on different machines; any variation is a bug. If there's something about a system (compiler, libraries, kernel, hardware, whatever) that changes the behavior of djbdns, then that platform is not supported, and you are not permitted to distribute binaries for it.
In short, you're allowed to distribute binary or source versions if and only if you distribute it exactly as he wrote it and distributes it on his site. These kind of conditions are why you don't find Pine and qmail in Debian's archives in anything other than source format, forcing you to compile it manually with diff patches if you want it to integrate properly into the Debian system. Because of this, I have some serious doubts that djbdns will catch on.
Plus the fact that drive spinup seems to be the time when a borderline drive will fail. The only 'safe' power management I can see for servers would be adaptively reducing processor speed in relation to CPU load. Sleep and suspend are dangerous on a server, especially since a power failure can happen at any time, even in places other than California. Servers need to respond to a UPS power fault signal at a moments notice. As for DPMS monitor power savings, I don't see any harm, the monitor can be changed with or without the server running, so there's little danger of downtime because of that.
There are too many things that can go wrong when drives spin up and down. Particularily if the drive hasn't been idle for a large period of time. There's actually a problem where the drive heads can acumulate material from the disk itself, and by powering down the drive, the heads come to rest and the residue either falls in the drive platters or virtually glues the head to the platter. Not good.
CPU and video card power management would be far less worrysome, since there's no mechanical wear and tear that can be caused by them going in/out of sleep, with the exception of the monitor which can be externally replaced without downing a server. However, I'd be rather concerned that they don't go completely to sleep otherwise a power failure may cause the server to completely drain the UPS without trying to shut itself down.
FYI, DFM's are only Windows resource files. With a click in the IDE, you can view the source for these files..and they're pretty self documenting.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that feature. Either way, if someone wanted to make absolutely sure that the CLX could be included with distributions that have a strict meaning on the term "free", I'm sure decoding the.dfm format would be the only major obstacle (and who knows, maybe Kylix uses text files instead of binary files, making it even easier). It might also help cross-pollination to other platforms that have similar features to Linux, such as the BSDs, Solaris, and we can't forget about MacOSX (although a few non-visual and all the visual CLX components will have to be rewritten).
Personally, I think C++ Builder and Delphi are the best RAD tools out there to date. They come in handy when I either need a quick little program to do something that would be either too hard or too much trouble to do in a console-mode program. Perhaps this'll also be a chance for Visual Basic programmers to finally learn a real programming language or two.;-)
Still, I find it fascinating that people object to a commercial product (BTW, I posted the notification that Kylix was out this AM...and was rejected. Argh. Think Cmdr. Taco has an automatic reject script on my id) simply because it is closed source.
Well, if it's just the IDE that's closed source, that's certainly fine by me, as long as all the tools I'd need to compile the program can be made available to other users in an open source format. I wouldn't want to force someone to go against their beliefs just for a single program. I think that Borland is being quite generous in trying to balance their need to make a profit off their products while still trying to be a good member of the Linux community, and for that they must be applauded. Most don't even bother trying, even when it would be worth their while.
Kylix was designed by Borland to fill the needs of existing Delphi and VB programmers...programmers that want to bring their apps to Linux. These applications may or may not be intended for the general Linux community. Instead, they may be commercial or private ventures where the open source issues are negated.
Yes, and for those types of programmers, the $999/$1999 price tag probably isn't all that high, especially since it'll let them reuse most of the Delphi code that they may have already written. However, I think it would've been nice if there was a price point between the $999 'desktop' version and the free/$99 'GPL' version that allowed binary only distribution of their apps, since I think this would probably consist of a large number of people who program an app as a hobby and sell it, but can't really afford $999 in one shot.
If you want to carve stones with bronze chisels, then have at it. Me, I'll go with the carbide tip cutting tool. Of course, I'm partial as I've been a Delphi developer since its initial release and think everything else is a bronze chisel.
That's a rather narrow view of the world. Every language has it's strengths and weaknesses, and knowing which tool to use and when is the mark of a skilled artist/programmer. Now I'll admit that I don't really like or use either Pascal/Delphi or BASIC/VB, that's not to say I don't recognise they have merits, it's just that I don't like them particularly (just a matter of taste and opinion). So, I'm mostly waiting for the Borland C++ Builder-style part of the Kylix project, because to be honest, usually writing the interactions between GUI elements can be the hardest part of writing an app.
Lets hope Kylix marks the end of one more advantage Microsoft likes to use to claim superiority over Linux -- the current lack of applications.
It appears to be one of the only things they've finally learned. This version still includes the rather brain-damaged GCC 2.96-RH CVS snapshot rather than an official released version like everyone else uses, which means more kgcc fun. I imagine the upgrade proceedure is the same as it's always been (painful), as well.
I have a lot of RedHat, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to use their products. Perhaps it's the difficult to decompose RPM format... Perhaps it's the funky places it puts certain files... Perhaps it's the RPM dependancy hell... I don't know.
Re:MacOS x86 port exists, a W95 PPC port exists to
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OS X on x86?
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Yes, NT was ported to PowerPC, but only IBM PowerPC's, not Apple Macintoshes. Despite sharing the same CPU, the machines are different enough to prevent them from running each other's code. Of course, NT 5/Windows2000 only runs on x86 because no one else would agree to continue to maintain the non-x86 ports.
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The idea that they can do no wrong is nothing new within Microsoft. Especially if you consider, that officially, there are no bugs in Microsoft programs, only issues. Even the enormous flop, Microsoft Bob is not officially called a failure, only 'ahead of it's time'. Otherwise, they push and push the product on consumers until it's the standard and no other real alternatives exist. I fear WinAMP and RealPlayer will be the next targets with Windows Media Player 7/8.
You know, if the Gnome group and the KDE group sat down together and decided to do everything they could do to make interoperability between them a top priority, I don't think anything or anyone could stop them. I think diversity is a wonderful thing, but not when a user is forced to make a potentially incorrect decision on which 'desktop environment' to use. I would love to see QT/KDE apps completely at home on a Gnome-based system and for GTK/Gnome apps to seamlessly fit into a KDE system. For all their technical differences, they're functionally similar. KDE has a very functionally complete HTML browser, whereas Gnome doesn't, and is betting on the Gecko engine from the Mozilla project. There's a lot of potentally unneeded duplication here, and it's not the developers who are suffering -- it's users that may be considering trying out a non-Windows system for the first time that are harmed.
Usually mongrels (dog or cat) are a better choice, if for no other reason that the odds may be in the pet's favor to have a long and healthy life. You might not end up with an award winning pet, but you should have a friend and companion that you can share many, many years with.
In Canada, such a levy was recently enacted, granting a these organizations at $0.21/unit levy on each unit. In exchange for this levy, Canadians now have the right to make private copies of copyrighted work for personal use without infringing copyright. On paper, the general public gained a lot, but in reality, no one ever really charged someone with copyright infringement for making copies for personal use. In reality the only thing the recording industry lost was the ability to claim that making a copy of your friend's CD is illegal.
The government agency that is responsible for this is the Copyright Board of Canada (http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/), and they have a release on that site regarding this.
WinNT/2000, Netware, Linux, [your favorite OS here], etc all have their strengths and weaknesses. Linux (and all other unix-style systems) make excellent web servers. Netware excells at file and printer serving. NT/2000 offers some of the best office groupware. You won't find me using Linux blindly when an NT server would work better.
Besides, I'm a cynic by nature. It's practically instinctive for me to criticize, whether it be Microsoft, RedHat, Gnome, KDE, IBM, the Canadian federal government, or whatever pisses me off today.
Microsoft has a consistent business strategy of waiting to see what their competitors do, watch them make the mistakes, and then release software that's a generation behind what their competitors are sporting, but tie it close enough to their other products that the other vendors' products aren't as worthwhile to use. With a few exceptions (Microsoft Bob), few Microsoft products have ever failed miserably due to the level of integration and marketing, although Microsoft still refuses to acknowledge that Bob was a failure (official company line is it was 'ahead of it's time').
Currently, I tend to feel SAFER buying stuff online from trusted merchants with my credit card than giving it to someone who works in a store. Most online merchants destroy your credit card number after it's no longer needed, and keep only minimal records of it (4 first or last numbers). Compared to bricks-and-mortar shopping, where the store makes one or two copies for itself and one copy for you to lose, with 'customers' behind you that can look over your shoulder because of poor handling of the card, it makes me feel nervous. However, if you take away encryption from the equation, all bets are off, since a packet may travel through dozens of systems and routers before being recieved by the vendor you're trying to buy from.
How much freedom are you willing to sacrifice in order to gain safety? To me, the benefits that society gains from encryption far outweigh the evils that can be done with it. Besides the fact that if they're already criminals, do you think they'll have any qualms about using 'illegal' encryption products? You'll only stop stupid ones, and they're rarely the ones that do the most damage. I'm glad to be living in Canada on this point -- there's never been any plans to stop private citizens from using or exporting encryption, with the exception of those products imported from the United States that employed 'high-grade' encryption that was banned from export from the United States. Why do you suppose the OpenBSD project, which uses encryption where ever possible, is based in Canada? ;-)
Under the DMCA and UCITA it could be quite legal for a program developer who integrates some 'intelectual property' (magic numbers, etc)into the databases that contain YOUR data could prevent a competitive company from importing or in any way using the data in that databse. Sounds nice and scary, doesn't it.
I know all this information they give about secure databases and SSL encrypted transactions are supposed to make the user feel more secure, but asking for a credit card number before even placing the order shouldn't make anyone feel confortable. Nor should the pushyness of Amazon's current business practices make anyone want to deal with them ("Oh, signing up for an account, well, we'll just turn on add the advertising, and allow us to share information with anyone we choose, and did we mention one-click(TM) purchasing is on by default?").
There are a number of companies out there that have this right, such as ebworld.com, and chapters.ca. They ask for credit card information during each and every transaction. Unforunately, it's not just the online world that's a little too lax with credit card precautions -- nearly any of the major gasoline stations in my area, will print your full credit card number on any and all receipts, etc. If you think about how easy it is to locate a credit card number in a normal person's trash, suddenly the danger of online transactions seems trivial.
Yeah, and these days, it's not too difficult to buy "video stabilizers" that remove Macrovision encoding, especially since a large number of older TVs have severe problems with the Macrovision scrambling of the sync. Then again, none of Macrovisions's products seem all that effective. When was the last time a CD protected with SafeDisc stopped anyone for very long.
Either way, it's a tough decision. A proprietary format that can only be played in Windows, costs money and only under the conditions that the copyright owners specify, or a well documented public format with no protection that I can stick in any of my computers or even my DVD player (or soon car CD player) and playback without a problem...
Okay, then you rip appart your speakers, and remove the actual speakers and solder on standard RCA jacks instead. As long as you keep the power down, you'll still be able to record it. There'll always be a weakest link somewhere that can be exploited. Either way, as the article says, they have to compete with the millions of protection-free MP3s, and sell controlled versions (probably at a lower bitrate) for $3.99/ea.
You'll find a real hesitance for distributors to use qmail or djbdns because even if they do find a bug (remotely exploitable or not), the only person who can 'bless' such changes to the code is D.J.B. himself, since his license prohibits binary OR source distribution of modified code. Debian found an unusual way around it via their dpkg system to download the original tar.gz, a diff, and then build the executable at install time, but for most companies this is unacceptable.
Paranoid or not, I HAVE had multiple failures on a RAID 5 array once. Mind you, it was the controller that failed and marked 2 of 4 drives in the array as down. There was no recovery. Besides, powering drives up and down induces stress on their mechanical systems, which greatly increases the chances of failure. Besides which, downtime and/or reduced performance because of a RAID array in a critical state isn't free, and costs both worker productivity and money to replace the dead drives.
Plus the fact that drive spinup seems to be the time when a borderline drive will fail. The only 'safe' power management I can see for servers would be adaptively reducing processor speed in relation to CPU load. Sleep and suspend are dangerous on a server, especially since a power failure can happen at any time, even in places other than California. Servers need to respond to a UPS power fault signal at a moments notice. As for DPMS monitor power savings, I don't see any harm, the monitor can be changed with or without the server running, so there's little danger of downtime because of that.
CPU and video card power management would be far less worrysome, since there's no mechanical wear and tear that can be caused by them going in/out of sleep, with the exception of the monitor which can be externally replaced without downing a server. However, I'd be rather concerned that they don't go completely to sleep otherwise a power failure may cause the server to completely drain the UPS without trying to shut itself down.
Personally, I think C++ Builder and Delphi are the best RAD tools out there to date. They come in handy when I either need a quick little program to do something that would be either too hard or too much trouble to do in a console-mode program. Perhaps this'll also be a chance for Visual Basic programmers to finally learn a real programming language or two. ;-)
Well, if it's just the IDE that's closed source, that's certainly fine by me, as long as all the tools I'd need to compile the program can be made available to other users in an open source format. I wouldn't want to force someone to go against their beliefs just for a single program. I think that Borland is being quite generous in trying to balance their need to make a profit off their products while still trying to be a good member of the Linux community, and for that they must be applauded. Most don't even bother trying, even when it would be worth their while. Yes, and for those types of programmers, the $999/$1999 price tag probably isn't all that high, especially since it'll let them reuse most of the Delphi code that they may have already written. However, I think it would've been nice if there was a price point between the $999 'desktop' version and the free/$99 'GPL' version that allowed binary only distribution of their apps, since I think this would probably consist of a large number of people who program an app as a hobby and sell it, but can't really afford $999 in one shot. That's a rather narrow view of the world. Every language has it's strengths and weaknesses, and knowing which tool to use and when is the mark of a skilled artist/programmer. Now I'll admit that I don't really like or use either Pascal/Delphi or BASIC/VB, that's not to say I don't recognise they have merits, it's just that I don't like them particularly (just a matter of taste and opinion). So, I'm mostly waiting for the Borland C++ Builder-style part of the Kylix project, because to be honest, usually writing the interactions between GUI elements can be the hardest part of writing an app.Lets hope Kylix marks the end of one more advantage Microsoft likes to use to claim superiority over Linux -- the current lack of applications.
I have a lot of RedHat, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to use their products. Perhaps it's the difficult to decompose RPM format... Perhaps it's the funky places it puts certain files... Perhaps it's the RPM dependancy hell... I don't know.
Yes, NT was ported to PowerPC, but only IBM PowerPC's, not Apple Macintoshes. Despite sharing the same CPU, the machines are different enough to prevent them from running each other's code. Of course, NT 5/Windows2000 only runs on x86 because no one else would agree to continue to maintain the non-x86 ports.