Timeline's point (which will surely be argued in court) is that Microsoft isn't qualified to make that promise in the first place, so the users can't get off the hook by saying "but Microsoft said...".
It's even worse than that. Anyone who is found to be infringing a patent has to license it and pay damages regardless - so they all owe money if they are using/selling an "Infringing Combination" and nothing Microsoft does or says will change that.
However, if a company is found to have not done due diligence after being informed that they were infringing a patent, then they have to pay punitive damages: the "triple" thing in the article.
Timeline are saying that believing a Microsoft press release doesn't count as due diligence, and all those firms knew about the potential patent infringement from the time they began their case. If the individual firms didn't cover their butts and get their own legal advice, then they're screwed.
Regardless of what Microsoft said, they're not a lawyer. That Microsofts lawyers looked it over first doesn't count, as they advise Microsoft not Microsoft's customers.
Large? Yes, but not that large. Being overly simplistic, each peice can be in one of 65 states (64 different squares, or not on the board) and you have 32 pieces. Thus your state space is at most 65^32 which is about 10^58. However, this is a major overestimation, since you can't have 2 pieces in the same space, bishops can only occupy exactly half the spaces, pawns are roughly 1/2 also, and a few other limitations. In all, I think the number of legal states is roughly 10^40 (give or take a few zeros).
You're not taking into account time. Starting from the beginning of a match, there are x possible moves that can be made. For each of those there are y_(1..x) possible replies. For each of those replies there are then a further set of possible second moves by white, etc...
The state space of chess is not all possible boards, but all possible games.
Should Google crawl every possible weblog constantly? Most of the popular blogs have in common that they update at least once a day or more. Google crawls those sites already more then once a day without problems, catching Zeitgeist.
I think it's when they update rather than how often that's exciting. When big events happen, people tend to comment on it immediately. Crawling once a day can't catch the moment.
But Google has a big relevancy filter, PageRanking.
But this is calculated on a very infrequent basis (comparatively). If I searched for Google and Pyra, I wouldn't find this announcement because it may not get crawled and page ranked for a month. Whereas people were commenting on it in blogs within minutes.
Your remarks make me think though. Google could use Pyra's Blogger for a dedicated search engine like Daypop, but with faster updates and perhaps better filters (although the PR in combination with keyword density and other factors does a good job). Those results can also be integrated in the normal engine.
But I'm wondering if they do this at once, or wait till Blogger has more then active 200.000 users. What do you think?
I think you can already see what I find most exciting about the combination of Google and Blogger;-)
Time is a powerful dimension that traditional crawlers can only map in a very course-grained way. Via the back-end of a large blogging engine, you can watch memes move in realtime.
Jshare suggested Google bought Blogger to get direct access to blog data.
But crawling the 200.000 active Blogs doesn't cost much resources. It's only a few gig of data. Why bother to buy a whole firm for that?
Yes you could crawl the blogs easily enough, but the magic of blogs is the ability to instantly gauge the zeitgeist of the net. If you have to crawl them periodically to do that then you lose the time advantage.
Crawling constantly would overload the blog servers and make Google unpopular. This way they get access to the backend and can index and load links straight into the crawler as people post.
Trackbacks can be used to provide realtime ratings of a blogger's ranking within the community and thus ratings of the pages they link to. With blogs, Google can harness a huge distributed realtime relevancy filter.
Heck!, I meant to point out that GPRS isn't anything special in terms of driver support. Normally the modem software in the phone makes GPRS available as a special telephone number. If you can find appropriate GPRS modem scripts, then you're laughing.
Also, if the phone does bluetooth, then you can make it work with a Mac - pretty much that simple. You might not always get the fancy stuff, but you'll be able to setup a virtual serial device through bluetooth to the modem in the phone. Then, as I say, you just need to get some scripts.
I've been successfully connecting via GSM and GPRS from my iBook since Jaguar arrived with drivers for the Motorola v66. The phone just plugs into the USB port via the supplied cable. I had to hunt around for some modem scripts for the phone, but you should be able to get hold of them via Google.
I don't understand this point. It is the 'no way to track sales' part that doesn't ring true.
The way they have it, it doesn't matter if they pay the mpeg2 fee on iDVD or the Superdrive, since iDVD isn't supplied w/o the superdrive and has been fixed to not work with any other drive (so it doesn't matter if someone sells it on).
Yeah, but because people view it as a "free" program they think it's OK to copy it and use it elsewhere - this being the crux of the problem here. As far as Apple were concerned, you weren't meant to have it if you didn't have a SuperDrive, thus any enablers allowing people to use a copy on another drive represents a problem for them.
If they paid the fee on iDVD, then they could sell it separately and add the mpeg2 fee. Just as easy to track; and Apple would be making it available to more customers too, so could make more money from it[1][2]. People have every right to sell the copy of iDVD that came with their machines if they don't need it, but the fee would be associated with the original iDVD purchase (whether it was included in the OS, or bought separately) and so would be already paid.
The thing is, iDVD isn't meant to make Apple money. Even the SuperDrives aren't designed to make Apple money. A high-end Mac is designed to make Apple money. Apple want a complete seamless solution for people who shell out for a high-end Mac with a SuperDrive. The point of the iApps is to differentiate Apple Macs and make them more attractive to purchasers.
The amount that Apple could charge for iDVD separately wouldn't compensate them for the money they'd lose by people buying a lower-end Mac (or not bothering to buy a new Mac) and a cheap external burner. They'd also need to worry about testing and support of a raft of different drives, costing them more money.
I don't understand your argument, apart from "that's the way it is". If so, then (IMO) that is/was a dumb decision by Apple, but they could easily change it with the next release of iDVD.
Yes, but they won't. Apple are not in the business of selling software. They sell hardware. All of the software Apple gives away or sells at low cost (Web Objects, Final Cut Pro, Shake, and other acquisitions are a fraction of the price of the competition) are designed to make Macs look good.
The best way to think of Apple's software is as very high-level drivers for their hardware;-)
I understood the reason that Apple stop people distributing these cracks is that Apple have to pay a licensing fee for the MPEG2 encoding algorithms used in iDVD. Since they effectively give away the software there is no way to track sales and pay the fee. So Apple struck a deal to pay based on sales of the SuperDrive instead - since iDVD can only be used with the SuperDrive.
If people start cracking iDVD to work with someone else's drives then Apple end up effectively breaking their agreement with MPLA. Even though it's not their fault, their software is being used without the fee having been paid. Apple have to enforce the license or stop giving it away and sell it instead.
I know that Apple specifically say in the help for iChat that AIM users may need to download a newer client in order to see and communicate with.Mac users.
Certainly the old client I had (4.3) wouldn't even let you type in a.Mac screen name (didn't like the '@' or '.' characters), also iChat couldn't see me online with the old AIM client and couldn't send messages to me.
Wouldn't surprise me if it's just a bug/version problem.
No, and that's the point. They don't have to support it.
Connectix do something similar with VirtualPC for Mac. They sell various ludicrously expensive editions with different Microsoft operating systems and then they sell an el-cheapo, electronic download, version bundled with PC-DOS.
No-one wants PC-DOS, but if you just want the plain app to install your own OS on it, that's the cheapest option. It allows them to stick to Microsoft's anti-competitive policies, but still give people the choice to do what they want.
The installer even has an "Install Application Only" option so you don't even have to delete PC-DOS afterwards;-)
Google "find other stories like this"?
on
Rat Mind Control
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· Score: 2
Perhaps Slashdot needs a thingy to extract the keywords out of a story and then search for previous stories containing those keywords and displaying them in a pre-submission "please confirm this story isn't a repost of one of the following".
Pulling the keywords "remote control rats whisker brain control" out of the story I found the previous submission (in May, also by timothy) as the top hit. Whilst I'm a huge fan of blaming the editors, I'm sure their job would be easier if the re-submissions were being weeded out in advance.
Stack machines... you mean, like the Java Virtual Machine? Or PostScript printers? Nope, nobody using that idea any more.
No, I think the OP meant that nobody is building actual stack-based processors anymore. The JVM is a virtual machine, and PostScript printers contain an interpreter running on a conventional processor (usually a RISC chip). Other than Sun's brief fling with the Java processor, stack machines have pretty much died.
Code morphing is a great idea, and it'll be really big as soon as someone wants to do something that it's good for.
Code morphing is a great idea indeed. But it already is in use in any JIT emulator or virtual machine. Crusoe is basically a very power-efficient processor running an x86 JIT emulator.
The big unanswered question is whether VLIW was a good idea or not...
Good point, but if you knew about it a whole month ago why didn't you post the story to/.? ( This is not meant to be a flame, simply an honest question to a complaint )
It wasn't really a complaint, just a jibe at the editorial comment;-)
Actually, I only found out about it myself a week or so ago. Seeing that the news was already old then I didn't bother doing anything about it.
If they do "play along" and support Palladium they can, pardon my French, go fuck themselves. Who cares? That is the wonderful thing about freedom, you don't need to save them and they don't need to listen to you. They are free to give away their freedoms left and right in exchange for a few shiny gadgets, and we (meaning anyone who values their freedom more than they value the latest pop single) are free to use, modify, develop, and play with open source and its derivatives.
Gah! I don't seem to be getting my point across very clearly. Let me try again:
Consider DVDs and the DMCA. As we have already seen it is now illegal in the US to write an open source program that can decode, and thus play, DVDs (DeCSS). If it is illegal to write a particular program then the noo-sphere (as ESR would call it) has been contracted ever-so-slightly. Yes, you are free to continue to play in the remaining space, but you have lost some freedom. Similarly it will be illegal to write free software that circumvents Palladium and any other DRM madness that the media companies come up with.
In small increments we are slowly giving up freedom. You can say "who cares! I didn't want to listen to the Spiderman soundtrack anyway" (which has been copy-protected by Sony so that it can't be played in a computer and ripped to mp3), but as a community we have lost something. If you don't defend other people's freedom then you will slowly lose your own.
To make my point another, more controversial, way: RJS wants Linux to be called "GNU/Linux" not to boost his own ego, but to recognise the freedom that the Free Software Foundation has fought so long for. Remember the FSF isn't Stallman, it's everyone who has ever contributed to the GNU project. They have collectively increased the space of our noosphere with tools, documentation, licenses, political lobbying, legal action and support, etc.
Complacency is the rot that eats away freedom.
But then again, I've always been too lazy and self-occupied to consider Victory a pre-condition for Freedom.
... and every system that included "pay-per-view" or subscription was not accepted by the market. Which was my main point
That depends on who is doing the paying. The demand on pay-per-listen is what just killed independant Internet radio and I didn't see anyone storming the gates with torches and pitchforks. People will just switch to listening to the "approved" streams of the corporations that own the media.
Huh? OpenSource enabled the Internet, it would be impossible without it. That was my point. Maybe you should answer to my point instead of switching topics.
I'm sorry, if that was your point you didn't make it very well since you wrote:
Because if it were not for Linux, Apache and BSD, we would all run proprietary MSN connections and only big corporations could afford going online with webpages.
which appears to clearly indicate that you believe Slashdot uses open source out of monetary concerns.
Yes. But helping Microsoft by sprewing FUD [...] is a bit counter-productive, don't you think?
I don't believe that I am helping Microsoft, but I do believe that people who dismiss concerns about the power they wield with empty statements like "Linux will replace Windows" are helping them. You are encouraging people to sit back and wait. By then it will be too late to repair the damage.
Open source is anathema to control freaks. Therefore they won't ever aid it. The media companies can only control the media with proprietary formats, protocols, encryption, and rights management. There's only one company capable of delivering that scale of proprietary system to them.
Like I said, Microsoft will win because of the MPAA and the RIAA. The only way to stop them winning is to stop the MPAA and the RIAA from controlling the distribution of media. Linux won't beat Windows because it's better or because it's free. Open source can only thrive in a free environment. We need to protect our freedom first. The DMCA exists because not enough people cared about their freedom to stop it.
How stupid do you have to be to think people care about what's illegal?
You can get almost any movie on the net you can get in stores. Correction: You can get A LOT MORE movies on the net than you can get in stores. That's a fact.
As with most Slashdot weenies, you're confusing yourself with "people". Most people buy CDs and DVDs. Any system that has looked like it might reach too many people has been ruthlessly destroyed (Napster, AudioGalaxy, Kazaa, DeCSS, net radio,...).
Well, Opensource made it possible that you can spread your "Microsoft will win - FUD" here. Because if it were not for Linux, Apache and BSD, we would all run proprietary MSN connections and only big corporations could afford going online with webpages.
No, you're confusing "free beer" with "free speech". The value in open source is in the fact that the source is open, not that it's cheap. OSDN could easily purchase Sun, IBM, or HP boxen bundled with free application servers. The cost of the bandwidth, hardware, and support easily dwarfs the proprietry software costs anyway.
Open source does not enable Slashdot. Slashdot enables open source. It would be hypocritical if Slashdot ran on Microsoft software, but it wouldn't stop it being a forum for the free software community.
You have to snap out of your complacency. Freedom isn't something that you can sit around and wait for, it's something you have to fight for.
Still, it is something you have ON YOUR MOTHERBOARD. Like the CSS key... it's there, it will be just a matter of time before those evil linux users will find a way to bypass it, fake it, and run whatever they want. Bringing havoc on the pristine, certified, public-key signed microsoft world. Like a cancer...
....or at least I hope so. I have much more trust in a 15-years old linux north-european user, than in any chunk of Microsoft Engineers that live in their golden world, without Windows (hah! pun!) on the outside world.
It largely doesn't matter if it gets broken, because it will be illegal to do so thanks to the DMCA. They won't be able to stop l33t hax0rs breaking it and telling each other the details over IRC, but they will be able to pull down any websites that publish the details or a program that circumvents the chip.
You might be able to find somewhere online the CSS key and source code necessary to play DVDs on Linux, but all the while the key and code is illegal you won't find a distribution touching it with a barge pole and if a distribution doesn't pick it up then the vast majority of possible users will never see it.
Hence there will never be an official open source operating system that can talk to the Palladium chip, as to do so would mean publishing the details of its operation. And if it's not an official distribution then it doesn't matter as it will never have any widespread use.
Linux will replace Windows just like the open PC-platform replaced Apple and Amiga.
I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. Especially since Apple has a substantially higher percentage of the desktop market than Linux and Apple has apparently been "replaced".
Wait, there is no "and" in this sentence. People want to consume media, their interest end after that. They don't want to pay ridiculous amounts for subscriptions and fees.
This is foolish in the extreme. People pay ridiculous subscriptions and fees everytime they buy a CD, a DVD, or a player for either of those media. It is because of this that P2P scares the media industry so badly. They currently make vast profits out of people who don't realise that they are being ripped off. They will do - and already are doing - anything to protect that.
The media companies have already managed to come up with a film format that only their approved players can play (DVD) and make it illegal for you to reverse engineer your own (DMCA). Just how stupid do you have to be to think that they won't do the same for music and broadcast video.
Well, and I demand a million $ from you.
The difference is that you clearly don't have a monopoly over anything of value to me, nor the ability to buy a law to compel me to give you anything. This is not the case for the MPAA or the RIAA.
Microsoft will win because they know which side their bread is buttered on. If they help the MPAA and the RIAA then they'll get their massive financial and political support. That's why Microsoft care about digital rights management. If Microsoft can deliver 90% of the desktop market to the MPAA and the RIAA then they will happily hand Microsoft a monopoly right to the media.
Sometimes you don't get what you demand. Especially when you make unrealistic requirements.
My point is that to most people the demands don't appear unrealistic. Like I say, most people don't give a damn that they're getting screwed. And of the few that do give a damn, the majority of them can't think of anything to do but whine on Slashdot.
So far I haven't seen anything to suggest that the future I suggest here won't come to pass. The DMCA became law and no legal challenges to it have succeeded yet, the RIAA just killed independant Internet radio, the MPAA have pretty much successfully killed the open source DVD player, the MPLA are suggesting a fee structure for MPEG4 that will kill independant video streaming, Sony are bringing out computer-proof CDs, various attempts by the Senator for Disney to install DRM into hard drives and onto motherboards,...
Sorry, exactly when is Linux or the open source movement going to change anything?
If MS starts this scheme in 2 years, it will take another 7 years until 90% of their users have it (and that's still not enough because 10% is still too much to lose).
Microsoft can afford to take the long view. The biggest driving force of Palladium/Longhorn will be the DRM technology. People want to consume media and the media companies will require rights management. The media companies can also afford to take the long view. They only need to keep crushing P2P upstarts through sheer weight until the laws and technology to support DRM are widespread.
If only "trusted" apps running on a "trusted" operating system can play music and video, then people will buy those. Remember the vast majority of people aren't interested in their rights - and before anyone starts, I didn't see any groundswell of ordinary people defeating the DMCA.
There is no "Linux" to defeat this. There are only distributions. The big commercial distros are the ones that will end up on ordinary people's desktops and they can either play along or not play - it'll be that simple. When it comes to pleasing shareholders I can guarantee that they will chose to play along.
You just can't afford to be complacent on this issue. This is the biggest failing of the Open Source movement - there is no movement, just a bunch of people writing open source software. This works fine when there's no threat to the freedom, but when there is there's no organisation.
The closest thing free software has ever had to a movement with principles and goals is the Free Software Foundation - and look at how ridiculed RMS has become.
People like sitting on their butts and whining a lot more than they like actively campaigning.
I think the perception that Macs are more secure derives from their relative lack of use in the server world. There are more Windows machines out there and therefore, Windows machines have more problems. I didn't see anything about relative failure rates between MacOS and Windows but I wouldn't be suprised if they were about the same. (Linux might be a little better if for no other reason than your average Linux user actually cares about security).
I think the perception that Macs are more secure derives from the fact that Mac users rarely get viruses.
I've used Macs as my primary desktop for 10 years and I've never caught a virus. Not once. Not even when Mac viruses where more prevalent and I used to wander about with floppies in student labs. I still don't take particular care in what I download. I haven't used any kind of anti-virus software in about 7 years, because it was a waste of time and money.
Most Mac users don't bother with anti-virus software because they feel no particular threat. Whereas Windows users, and rightly so, live in continual terror of viruses. This is just a cheap attempt by an anti-virus vendor to spread FUD in the hope of drumming up some business.
And don't anyone get it into their heads that Mac OS X is more secure than Mac OS 9 either, I could drive a truck through the security flaws in it. But I still don't worry because most virus writers couldn't give a rats arse about writing a Mac virus. There's no particular reward in infecting such a minor player when there's such rich pickings to be had in the Windows world.
This movie was mentioned because it was definitely inspired by video games, with its wire-fu, fighting-game-physics fight scenes, even though it wasn't actually based off a video game.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Crouching Tiger was a tribute to old HK martial arts movies. I would have said the reverse: that Crouching Tiger is included in the programme because HK martial arts films influenced a great many video games.
Skip to 1:28:40 for the fabulous line from Steve Jobs in reply to a question about Apple's previous bizarre attempts at getting into the server market:
I wasn't here when Apple did a lot of those earlier [...] server exploration [...] I look at that as a dream when, you know, Apple was in a coma.
Try reading what I wrote. At that point it's too late: the core is written in nasty old sh and hardcoded C. No amount of installing packages later can fix that fact.
I did. I still disagree with you. Core scripts being written in sh does not impact system administration. It impacts people who need to maintain the core scripts only.
In the event that an administrator needs to modify any of these scripts, the important thing is that the widest possible array of system administrators are able to. That means using sh. If I found a script I needed to alter written in perl, I'd rather wrip it out and re-write it. There'd be plenty of other people who'd say the same for Python, Ruby, or whatever high level language you pick. sh is universal.
The FreeBSD solution is to move everything to depend on the/bin/sh executable: it's so vile and useless that nobody sane would **ever** use it for a significant application. Since no applications use it, there can be no conflict. This is self-evidently stupid.
No-one is asking you to write applications in it. All system administrators live and breath sh. It has existed, largely unchanged, on every UNIX platform since the dawn of time (epoch). If you can't hack it then I suggest you get out of the sysadmin game (and if you're not a system administrator, what the hell is this argument based on?)
If you wish to layer your own administration framework on top of the core system, then you are free to choose whatever language you like.
I recommend using Arusha which uses classless object-oriented XML source and supports methods written in Python, perl, or sh. [But I would recommend it as one of the developers.;-)]
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Timeline's point (which will surely be argued in court) is that Microsoft isn't qualified to make that promise in the first place, so the users can't get off the hook by saying "but Microsoft said...".
It's even worse than that. Anyone who is found to be infringing a patent has to license it and pay damages regardless - so they all owe money if they are using/selling an "Infringing Combination" and nothing Microsoft does or says will change that.
However, if a company is found to have not done due diligence after being informed that they were infringing a patent, then they have to pay punitive damages: the "triple" thing in the article.
Timeline are saying that believing a Microsoft press release doesn't count as due diligence, and all those firms knew about the potential patent infringement from the time they began their case. If the individual firms didn't cover their butts and get their own legal advice, then they're screwed.
Regardless of what Microsoft said, they're not a lawyer. That Microsofts lawyers looked it over first doesn't count, as they advise Microsoft not Microsoft's customers.
This is a major SNAFU on Microsoft's part.
Large? Yes, but not that large. Being overly simplistic, each peice can be in one of 65 states (64 different squares, or not on the board) and you have 32 pieces. Thus your state space is at most 65^32 which is about 10^58. However, this is a major overestimation, since you can't have 2 pieces in the same space, bishops can only occupy exactly half the spaces, pawns are roughly 1/2 also, and a few other limitations. In all, I think the number of legal states is roughly 10^40 (give or take a few zeros).
You're not taking into account time. Starting from the beginning of a match, there are x possible moves that can be made. For each of those there are y_(1..x) possible replies. For each of those replies there are then a further set of possible second moves by white, etc...
The state space of chess is not all possible boards, but all possible games.
Should Google crawl every possible weblog constantly? Most of the popular blogs have in common that they update at least once a day or more. Google crawls those sites already more then once a day without problems, catching Zeitgeist.
;-)
I think it's when they update rather than how often that's exciting. When big events happen, people tend to comment on it immediately. Crawling once a day can't catch the moment.
But Google has a big relevancy filter, PageRanking.
But this is calculated on a very infrequent basis (comparatively). If I searched for Google and Pyra, I wouldn't find this announcement because it may not get crawled and page ranked for a month. Whereas people were commenting on it in blogs within minutes.
Your remarks make me think though. Google could use Pyra's Blogger for a dedicated search engine like Daypop, but with faster updates and perhaps better filters (although the PR in combination with keyword density and other factors does a good job). Those results can also be integrated in the normal engine.
But I'm wondering if they do this at once, or wait till Blogger has more then active 200.000 users. What do you think?
I think you can already see what I find most exciting about the combination of Google and Blogger
Time is a powerful dimension that traditional crawlers can only map in a very course-grained way. Via the back-end of a large blogging engine, you can watch memes move in realtime.
Jshare suggested Google bought Blogger to get direct access to blog data.
But crawling the 200.000 active Blogs doesn't cost much resources. It's only a few gig of data. Why bother to buy a whole firm for that?
Yes you could crawl the blogs easily enough, but the magic of blogs is the ability to instantly gauge the zeitgeist of the net. If you have to crawl them periodically to do that then you lose the time advantage.
Crawling constantly would overload the blog servers and make Google unpopular. This way they get access to the backend and can index and load links straight into the crawler as people post.
Trackbacks can be used to provide realtime ratings of a blogger's ranking within the community and thus ratings of the pages they link to. With blogs, Google can harness a huge distributed realtime relevancy filter.
Heck!, I meant to point out that GPRS isn't anything special in terms of driver support. Normally the modem software in the phone makes GPRS available as a special telephone number. If you can find appropriate GPRS modem scripts, then you're laughing.
Also, if the phone does bluetooth, then you can make it work with a Mac - pretty much that simple. You might not always get the fancy stuff, but you'll be able to setup a virtual serial device through bluetooth to the modem in the phone. Then, as I say, you just need to get some scripts.
I've been successfully connecting via GSM and GPRS from my iBook since Jaguar arrived with drivers for the Motorola v66. The phone just plugs into the USB port via the supplied cable. I had to hunt around for some modem scripts for the phone, but you should be able to get hold of them via Google.
GPRS is the cat's ass.
Alternatively, search the Science section of Slashdot to find the last time this was posted.
I'm sure I just saw that cat...
I don't understand this point. It is the 'no way to track sales' part that doesn't ring true.
;-)
The way they have it, it doesn't matter if they pay the mpeg2 fee on iDVD or the Superdrive, since iDVD isn't supplied w/o the superdrive and has been fixed to not work with any other drive (so it doesn't matter if someone sells it on).
Yeah, but because people view it as a "free" program they think it's OK to copy it and use it elsewhere - this being the crux of the problem here. As far as Apple were concerned, you weren't meant to have it if you didn't have a SuperDrive, thus any enablers allowing people to use a copy on another drive represents a problem for them.
If they paid the fee on iDVD, then they could sell it separately and add the mpeg2 fee. Just as easy to track; and Apple would be making it available to more customers too, so could make more money from it[1][2]. People have every right to sell the copy of iDVD that came with their machines if they don't need it, but the fee would be associated with the original iDVD purchase (whether it was included in the OS, or bought separately) and so would be already paid.
The thing is, iDVD isn't meant to make Apple money. Even the SuperDrives aren't designed to make Apple money. A high-end Mac is designed to make Apple money. Apple want a complete seamless solution for people who shell out for a high-end Mac with a SuperDrive. The point of the iApps is to differentiate Apple Macs and make them more attractive to purchasers.
The amount that Apple could charge for iDVD separately wouldn't compensate them for the money they'd lose by people buying a lower-end Mac (or not bothering to buy a new Mac) and a cheap external burner. They'd also need to worry about testing and support of a raft of different drives, costing them more money.
I don't understand your argument, apart from "that's the way it is". If so, then (IMO) that is/was a dumb decision by Apple, but they could easily change it with the next release of iDVD.
Yes, but they won't. Apple are not in the business of selling software. They sell hardware. All of the software Apple gives away or sells at low cost (Web Objects, Final Cut Pro, Shake, and other acquisitions are a fraction of the price of the competition) are designed to make Macs look good.
The best way to think of Apple's software is as very high-level drivers for their hardware
I understood the reason that Apple stop people distributing these cracks is that Apple have to pay a licensing fee for the MPEG2 encoding algorithms used in iDVD. Since they effectively give away the software there is no way to track sales and pay the fee. So Apple struck a deal to pay based on sales of the SuperDrive instead - since iDVD can only be used with the SuperDrive.
If people start cracking iDVD to work with someone else's drives then Apple end up effectively breaking their agreement with MPLA. Even though it's not their fault, their software is being used without the fee having been paid. Apple have to enforce the license or stop giving it away and sell it instead.
I know that Apple specifically say in the help for iChat that AIM users may need to download a newer client in order to see and communicate with .Mac users.
.Mac screen name (didn't like the '@' or '.' characters), also iChat couldn't see me online with the old AIM client and couldn't send messages to me.
Certainly the old client I had (4.3) wouldn't even let you type in a
Wouldn't surprise me if it's just a bug/version problem.
No, and that's the point. They don't have to support it.
;-)
Connectix do something similar with VirtualPC for Mac. They sell various ludicrously expensive editions with different Microsoft operating systems and then they sell an el-cheapo, electronic download, version bundled with PC-DOS.
No-one wants PC-DOS, but if you just want the plain app to install your own OS on it, that's the cheapest option. It allows them to stick to Microsoft's anti-competitive policies, but still give people the choice to do what they want.
The installer even has an "Install Application Only" option so you don't even have to delete PC-DOS afterwards
Perhaps Slashdot needs a thingy to extract the keywords out of a story and then search for previous stories containing those keywords and displaying them in a pre-submission "please confirm this story isn't a repost of one of the following".
Pulling the keywords "remote control rats whisker brain control" out of the story I found the previous submission (in May, also by timothy) as the top hit. Whilst I'm a huge fan of blaming the editors, I'm sure their job would be easier if the re-submissions were being weeded out in advance.
Stack machines... you mean, like the Java Virtual Machine? Or PostScript printers? Nope, nobody using that idea any more.
No, I think the OP meant that nobody is building actual stack-based processors anymore. The JVM is a virtual machine, and PostScript printers contain an interpreter running on a conventional processor (usually a RISC chip). Other than Sun's brief fling with the Java processor, stack machines have pretty much died.
Code morphing is a great idea, and it'll be really big as soon as someone wants to do something that it's good for.
Code morphing is a great idea indeed. But it already is in use in any JIT emulator or virtual machine. Crusoe is basically a very power-efficient processor running an x86 JIT emulator.
The big unanswered question is whether VLIW was a good idea or not...
Good point, but if you knew about it a whole month ago why didn't you post the story to /.? ( This is not meant to be a flame, simply an honest question to a complaint )
;-)
It wasn't really a complaint, just a jibe at the editorial comment
Actually, I only found out about it myself a week or so ago. Seeing that the news was already old then I didn't bother doing anything about it.
One might equally ask why it took you guys a whole month to note the launch of this certification mark...
If they do "play along" and support Palladium they can, pardon my French, go fuck themselves. Who cares? That is the wonderful thing about freedom, you don't need to save them and they don't need to listen to you. They are free to give away their freedoms left and right in exchange for a few shiny gadgets, and we (meaning anyone who values their freedom more than they value the latest pop single) are free to use, modify, develop, and play with open source and its derivatives.
Gah! I don't seem to be getting my point across very clearly. Let me try again:
Consider DVDs and the DMCA. As we have already seen it is now illegal in the US to write an open source program that can decode, and thus play, DVDs (DeCSS). If it is illegal to write a particular program then the noo-sphere (as ESR would call it) has been contracted ever-so-slightly. Yes, you are free to continue to play in the remaining space, but you have lost some freedom. Similarly it will be illegal to write free software that circumvents Palladium and any other DRM madness that the media companies come up with.
In small increments we are slowly giving up freedom. You can say "who cares! I didn't want to listen to the Spiderman soundtrack anyway" (which has been copy-protected by Sony so that it can't be played in a computer and ripped to mp3), but as a community we have lost something. If you don't defend other people's freedom then you will slowly lose your own.
To make my point another, more controversial, way: RJS wants Linux to be called "GNU/Linux" not to boost his own ego, but to recognise the freedom that the Free Software Foundation has fought so long for. Remember the FSF isn't Stallman, it's everyone who has ever contributed to the GNU project. They have collectively increased the space of our noosphere with tools, documentation, licenses, political lobbying, legal action and support, etc.
Complacency is the rot that eats away freedom.
But then again, I've always been too lazy and self-occupied to consider Victory a pre-condition for Freedom.
*sigh*
... and every system that included "pay-per-view" or subscription was not accepted by the market. Which was my main point
That depends on who is doing the paying. The demand on pay-per-listen is what just killed independant Internet radio and I didn't see anyone storming the gates with torches and pitchforks. People will just switch to listening to the "approved" streams of the corporations that own the media.
Huh? OpenSource enabled the Internet, it would be impossible without it. That was my point. Maybe you should answer to my point instead of switching topics.
I'm sorry, if that was your point you didn't make it very well since you wrote:
Because if it were not for Linux, Apache and BSD, we would all run proprietary MSN connections and only big corporations could afford going online with webpages.
which appears to clearly indicate that you believe Slashdot uses open source out of monetary concerns.
Yes. But helping Microsoft by sprewing FUD [...] is a bit counter-productive, don't you think?
I don't believe that I am helping Microsoft, but I do believe that people who dismiss concerns about the power they wield with empty statements like "Linux will replace Windows" are helping them. You are encouraging people to sit back and wait. By then it will be too late to repair the damage.
Open source is anathema to control freaks. Therefore they won't ever aid it. The media companies can only control the media with proprietary formats, protocols, encryption, and rights management. There's only one company capable of delivering that scale of proprietary system to them.
Like I said, Microsoft will win because of the MPAA and the RIAA. The only way to stop them winning is to stop the MPAA and the RIAA from controlling the distribution of media. Linux won't beat Windows because it's better or because it's free. Open source can only thrive in a free environment. We need to protect our freedom first. The DMCA exists because not enough people cared about their freedom to stop it.
How stupid do you have to be to think people care about what's illegal?
...).
You can get almost any movie on the net you can get in stores. Correction: You can get A LOT MORE movies on the net than you can get in stores. That's a fact.
As with most Slashdot weenies, you're confusing yourself with "people". Most people buy CDs and DVDs. Any system that has looked like it might reach too many people has been ruthlessly destroyed (Napster, AudioGalaxy, Kazaa, DeCSS, net radio,
Well, Opensource made it possible that you can spread your "Microsoft will win - FUD" here. Because if it were not for Linux, Apache and BSD, we would all run proprietary MSN connections and only big corporations could afford going online with webpages.
No, you're confusing "free beer" with "free speech". The value in open source is in the fact that the source is open, not that it's cheap. OSDN could easily purchase Sun, IBM, or HP boxen bundled with free application servers. The cost of the bandwidth, hardware, and support easily dwarfs the proprietry software costs anyway.
Open source does not enable Slashdot. Slashdot enables open source. It would be hypocritical if Slashdot ran on Microsoft software, but it wouldn't stop it being a forum for the free software community.
You have to snap out of your complacency. Freedom isn't something that you can sit around and wait for, it's something you have to fight for.
Still, it is something you have ON YOUR MOTHERBOARD. Like the CSS key... it's there, it will be just a matter of time before those evil linux users will find a way to bypass it, fake it, and run whatever they want. Bringing havoc on the pristine, certified, public-key signed microsoft world. Like a cancer...
....or at least I hope so. I have much more trust in a 15-years old linux north-european user, than in any chunk of Microsoft Engineers that live in their golden world, without Windows (hah! pun!) on the outside world.
It largely doesn't matter if it gets broken, because it will be illegal to do so thanks to the DMCA. They won't be able to stop l33t hax0rs breaking it and telling each other the details over IRC, but they will be able to pull down any websites that publish the details or a program that circumvents the chip.
You might be able to find somewhere online the CSS key and source code necessary to play DVDs on Linux, but all the while the key and code is illegal you won't find a distribution touching it with a barge pole and if a distribution doesn't pick it up then the vast majority of possible users will never see it.
Hence there will never be an official open source operating system that can talk to the Palladium chip, as to do so would mean publishing the details of its operation. And if it's not an official distribution then it doesn't matter as it will never have any widespread use.
Linux will replace Windows just like the open PC-platform replaced Apple and Amiga.
...
I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. Especially since Apple has a substantially higher percentage of the desktop market than Linux and Apple has apparently been "replaced".
Wait, there is no "and" in this sentence. People want to consume media, their interest end after that. They don't want to pay ridiculous amounts for subscriptions and fees.
This is foolish in the extreme. People pay ridiculous subscriptions and fees everytime they buy a CD, a DVD, or a player for either of those media. It is because of this that P2P scares the media industry so badly. They currently make vast profits out of people who don't realise that they are being ripped off. They will do - and already are doing - anything to protect that.
The media companies have already managed to come up with a film format that only their approved players can play (DVD) and make it illegal for you to reverse engineer your own (DMCA). Just how stupid do you have to be to think that they won't do the same for music and broadcast video.
Well, and I demand a million $ from you.
The difference is that you clearly don't have a monopoly over anything of value to me, nor the ability to buy a law to compel me to give you anything. This is not the case for the MPAA or the RIAA.
Microsoft will win because they know which side their bread is buttered on. If they help the MPAA and the RIAA then they'll get their massive financial and political support. That's why Microsoft care about digital rights management. If Microsoft can deliver 90% of the desktop market to the MPAA and the RIAA then they will happily hand Microsoft a monopoly right to the media.
Sometimes you don't get what you demand. Especially when you make unrealistic requirements.
My point is that to most people the demands don't appear unrealistic. Like I say, most people don't give a damn that they're getting screwed. And of the few that do give a damn, the majority of them can't think of anything to do but whine on Slashdot.
So far I haven't seen anything to suggest that the future I suggest here won't come to pass. The DMCA became law and no legal challenges to it have succeeded yet, the RIAA just killed independant Internet radio, the MPAA have pretty much successfully killed the open source DVD player, the MPLA are suggesting a fee structure for MPEG4 that will kill independant video streaming, Sony are bringing out computer-proof CDs, various attempts by the Senator for Disney to install DRM into hard drives and onto motherboards,
Sorry, exactly when is Linux or the open source movement going to change anything?
If MS starts this scheme in 2 years, it will take another 7 years until 90% of their users have it (and that's still not enough because 10% is still too much to lose).
Microsoft can afford to take the long view. The biggest driving force of Palladium/Longhorn will be the DRM technology. People want to consume media and the media companies will require rights management. The media companies can also afford to take the long view. They only need to keep crushing P2P upstarts through sheer weight until the laws and technology to support DRM are widespread.
If only "trusted" apps running on a "trusted" operating system can play music and video, then people will buy those. Remember the vast majority of people aren't interested in their rights - and before anyone starts, I didn't see any groundswell of ordinary people defeating the DMCA.
There is no "Linux" to defeat this. There are only distributions. The big commercial distros are the ones that will end up on ordinary people's desktops and they can either play along or not play - it'll be that simple. When it comes to pleasing shareholders I can guarantee that they will chose to play along.
You just can't afford to be complacent on this issue. This is the biggest failing of the Open Source movement - there is no movement, just a bunch of people writing open source software. This works fine when there's no threat to the freedom, but when there is there's no organisation.
The closest thing free software has ever had to a movement with principles and goals is the Free Software Foundation - and look at how ridiculed RMS has become.
People like sitting on their butts and whining a lot more than they like actively campaigning.
I think the perception that Macs are more secure derives from their relative lack of use in the server world. There are more Windows machines out there and therefore, Windows machines have more problems. I didn't see anything about relative failure rates between MacOS and Windows but I wouldn't be suprised if they were about the same. (Linux might be a little better if for no other reason than your average Linux user actually cares about security).
I think the perception that Macs are more secure derives from the fact that Mac users rarely get viruses.
I've used Macs as my primary desktop for 10 years and I've never caught a virus. Not once. Not even when Mac viruses where more prevalent and I used to wander about with floppies in student labs. I still don't take particular care in what I download. I haven't used any kind of anti-virus software in about 7 years, because it was a waste of time and money.
Most Mac users don't bother with anti-virus software because they feel no particular threat. Whereas Windows users, and rightly so, live in continual terror of viruses. This is just a cheap attempt by an anti-virus vendor to spread FUD in the hope of drumming up some business.
And don't anyone get it into their heads that Mac OS X is more secure than Mac OS 9 either, I could drive a truck through the security flaws in it. But I still don't worry because most virus writers couldn't give a rats arse about writing a Mac virus. There's no particular reward in infecting such a minor player when there's such rich pickings to be had in the Windows world.
This movie was mentioned because it was definitely inspired by video games, with its wire-fu, fighting-game-physics fight scenes, even though it wasn't actually based off a video game.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Crouching Tiger was a tribute to old HK martial arts movies. I would have said the reverse: that Crouching Tiger is included in the programme because HK martial arts films influenced a great many video games.
Skip to 1:28:40 for the fabulous line from Steve Jobs in reply to a question about Apple's previous bizarre attempts at getting into the server market:
I wasn't here when Apple did a lot of those earlier [...] server exploration [...] I look at that as a dream when, you know, Apple was in a coma.
Try reading what I wrote. At that point it's too late: the core is written in nasty old sh and hardcoded C. No amount of installing packages later can fix that fact.
/bin/sh executable: it's so vile and useless that nobody sane would **ever** use it for a significant application. Since no applications use it, there can be no conflict. This is self-evidently stupid.
;-)]
I did. I still disagree with you. Core scripts being written in sh does not impact system administration. It impacts people who need to maintain the core scripts only.
In the event that an administrator needs to modify any of these scripts, the important thing is that the widest possible array of system administrators are able to. That means using sh. If I found a script I needed to alter written in perl, I'd rather wrip it out and re-write it. There'd be plenty of other people who'd say the same for Python, Ruby, or whatever high level language you pick. sh is universal.
The FreeBSD solution is to move everything to depend on the
No-one is asking you to write applications in it. All system administrators live and breath sh. It has existed, largely unchanged, on every UNIX platform since the dawn of time (epoch). If you can't hack it then I suggest you get out of the sysadmin game (and if you're not a system administrator, what the hell is this argument based on?)
If you wish to layer your own administration framework on top of the core system, then you are free to choose whatever language you like.
I recommend using Arusha which uses classless object-oriented XML source and supports methods written in Python, perl, or sh. [But I would recommend it as one of the developers.