Point taken. However, if this page is correct, there are efforts under way to port it, and OpenBSD apperantly has been ported. The bottom line is that BSD is plenty available on PPC hardware, and if Apple had wanted to use a different flavor they could have done so.
I really hope you're trolling and not serious. Or maybe you're 15 and have nothing better to do than launch idle insults at random people for no good reason. I guess I shouldn't have expected a rational discussion on a slashdot forum anyway.
Well, yeah, but how does that apply to the bundling issue. Are you saying that it's legal to bundle physical items, but software is different? What if your Windows liscence allowed to be transferred? Would that be legal? Do you honestly believe that would make a shred of difference in the court of law?
The point of these class action suits isn't whether or not they get a license, it's whether or not you have a choice. And up until recently, the average consumer that lacked the know-how to build their own machine was without choice if they wanted to buy from a reliable OEM.
Sure, but I still think my analogy to Apple holds. If I have a right to PC hardware without a copy of Windows, don't I have a right to PPC hardware without a copy of Mac OS? My question is: how is this different?
The real difference is that Microsoft has a larger market share, and hence lawyers can get more money out of them. But as a matter of law and economics, what's the difference? Judge Jackson ruled that the "relevant market" for Microsoft was PC consumer OS's, so it would seem that there is a similar market for antitrust purposes for Mac hardware. If that's the case, Apple's far more of a monopolist than Microsoft is.
The logic of your position seems to me to lead to the conclusion that no company can ever enter into exclusive bundling arrangements. Does that mean that nVidia got too much market share, OEMs wouldn't be allowed to sign exclusive deals with them to bundle in all of their computers? Or if I don't like the hard drive in one of Compaq's computers, do I have a right to demand they put in a different one of those?
Law has to be objective and clear to everyone who applies it. I hope I'm not coming accross as just asking assinine questions to be annoying. It's crucial that antitrust law like all law be specific, clear, and universal. You can't have one set of rules for companies you like and another for those you don't, and you can't change the rules in the middle of the game. I believe that's what a lawsuit would mean-- Microsoft isn't being punished for breaking any identifiable law. They are being punished for making a product that some people don't like. I think that's bad law no matter how you slice it.
What I love about arguments like this on Slashdot is that one side usually takes a tone of moral superiority while simultaneously stooping to the crudest ad homs. Microsoft is so obviously evil that there's no point in having anything like rational argument on the subject. It's much more fun to use loaded words and denounce anyone who disagrees with you as a "stupid fuck" and an "idiot." Never mind the fact that I made a couple of (IMHO) valid points that need a response. If I'm so obviously wrong, you might want to at least *try* to respond to them, instead of just launching immediately into a tirade about how evil Microsoft is and how stupid I am.
My point was twofold. First, you do have options, just not with the big OEMs. Second, the reason for this is that 90%+ of consumers prefer Windows to the alternatives, and so that's what most companies offer. You didn't even try to respond to either of these points.
I hope that everyone on the anti-Microsoft is a stupid fuck like this idiot I'm responding to, as that will make it easier for Microsoft to get a fair outcome. Alas, I fear that some of Microsoft's critics are a bit more intelligent and are capable of coming up with some semblance of a rational argument.
Can you read? This is why I said "modulo bugs and crappy drivers." Obviously no OS is crash-proof, but some do a pretty good job of preventing apps from bringing the system down, while others (Mac OS and Win9x) are much easier for one app to crash.
And what do all of these OS's have in common? All of them require a high level of geekiness to install and use, and most of them have crappy GUI's and a very small installed software base. My grandmother is not going to run Lunix (whatever that is) to say nothing of Q-nix or Darwin. If you campare it to consumer-grade OS's (i.e. Mac OS) it holds up pretty well. By this standard, it would be illegal to charge anything for any software, since there are free alternatives (albeit lousy ones in some cases) for any application.
I bet there were speakers, a modem, an ethernet jack, and dozens of other components in that laptop as well, to say nothing of all the bundled software. If you didn't want those, should you be able to demand refunds for those as well? Companies bundle products all the time. It's ludicrous to claim that you have a right to unbundle any product and demand a separate price for it.
This is bullshit. First of all, IBM fought cloners in court and lost. Most of them never lisenced IBM technology, and IBM never "opened up" their platform. It was forced open by black-box reverse engineering of their chipsets and extensive legal battles.
Secondly, Microsoft negotiates a separate contract with each of the major OEMs. Any one of them could tell MS to go to hell, and chances are all MS could do is raise the price of Windows. It's not Microsofts' fault that none of the OEMs have any balls.
Thirdly, you don't pay "full price" for pre-installed copies of Windows. Microsoft gives OEMs deep discounts, which presumably get passed on to the consumer.
Finally, at least MS liscences their OS. Apple doesn't even do that. If you want a Mac, you pay a "Mac OS tax" for the privilege. It's precisely the same issue. Can I sue Apple for not selling Macs without OS's? If not, then how is MS different?
Why do you think this is? Perhaps because the overwhelming majority of users prefer to have Windows on their machines? If there were really a huge outcry to offer alternative OS's, why wouldn't companies do so?
I would like a Ford car with a Chevy engine in it. I can't get it. Does that mean I'm paying a "Ford engine tax" if I go and swap out the engine myself. Am I paying a "prize tax" if I don't like the prize at the bottom of my box of cracker jacks?
Companies offer products that include things not everyone likes. That's life. They only offer what they think a large number of customers will buy. The fact that a few/.ers want a different OS on their machine doesn't give you the right to shove that decision down everyones' throat. If you think there's such a bid demand for this, I suggest you design your own laptop and offer whatever OS you want on it. But don't expect Dell and IBM to leap into action because you happen to dislike their offerings.
This is complete and utter bullshit. This would imply that computer companies have an obligation to install your system exactly the way you want it, and if it takes you any time at all to set things up yourself, that's grounds for a lawsuit.
What if a computer comes with IE and I want Netscape instead? Can I sue about that? What if it has both and I want to delete them to save space. Can I sue for that? How about if I don't use the web and don't want any browser. Is that justification for a lawsuit as well?
By that logic computer companies would have to spend hours on each computer installing and removing software as the user demanded. That's absurd. Dell has a right to put any software they like on its machines. If you don't like that, you are free to buy another machine that comes with a clean hard drive. That's your choice. But you have no right to dictate to Dell what OS's it puts on its machines.
No you weren't. There are lots of companies that offer computers without MS's operating system on it. The fact that the particular system you wanted didn't come without Windows doesn't mean you were "forced" to purchase it. It just meant that you got a component you didn't want in with the components you did. If you didn't like the whole package, go elsewhere.
By this logic you should be able to demand any component of the computer removed-- you don't want any memory or a sound card-- and get a discount for it. Computers are package-deals. There are dozens of components, and different companies put different parts in. You are free to pick those you want.
If a lot of people wanted computers without Windows, more companies would offer that option. They don't because there isn't the demand. If they're wrong, smaller companies will gain market share by offering what their competitors can't.
So can you get a Dell or Compaq computer without Windows? Probably not. But who says you have a right to a Dell or Compaq computer in the first place. If you don't like the package, don't buy it.
Next time I go shopping I'm going to demand my cereal without the prize at the bottom. After all, all of the cereals I like "force" me to pay for little plastic toys I'll never play with. I'm being oppressed!
So selling a dangerous product is immoral? Keep in mind that every smoker has known he was killing himself for 30 years, yet he chose to do it anyway. Why? Because he decided the pleasure he got from smoking a cigarette was worth it. My question is: who are the tobacco companies to say otherwise? Why should they attempt to impose a different set of values on their customers?
There are lots of other dangerous products that kill people-- cars, fatty food, alchohol, etc. Are all of those companies guilty as well? After all, McDonalds would probably save lives if it offered only vegetarian food. The auto industry would save lives if it made cars that only went 30 MPH. Does that make them morally culpable when someone dies of a heart attack or in a car crash?
This is an issue of individual liberty-- are individuals responsible for their own choices, or is it the job of corporations (or government) to decide that some risks are too great to allow you to take?
Let me put it this way: what do you think the tobacco companies should have done? Just close up shop? They didn't profit by killing people. They profited by selling customers a product they like and enjoy. It would be arrogant and paternalistic for them to decide to stop offering that product because they didn't believe their customers were bright enough to make the decision for themselves.
If this were just about children smoking, I might be more sympathetic, but it's not. Tobacco lawsuits are a massive wealth transfer from smokers (who are generally poor) to lawyers (who are generally rich.) It's terrible policy, by any standard. It is doing nothing to prevent children from smoking, and nothing to help those who are "addicted" to cigarettes. All it does is raise the price of cigarettes and use the money to line lawyers' pockets and produce assinine anti-smoking ads that don't fool anyone.
Darwin is Apple's buzzwordy name for the core of their OS. It didn't exist until Apple bought out Next and opened up their code. So Darwin is an Apple-created Unix-flavored OS that lies beneath the pretty GUI in OS X. Darwin was *not* developed by CMU or anyone else. It was written by Next developers using BSD as a starting point, but wasn't called Darwin until Apple bought the company and opened the source in ~99.
Darwin is as much a BSD as any of the other flavors. It's built atop Mach because that's how Next did it, and they continued in that tradition. Mach is a microkernel, atop which rests a layer that implements a BSD interface.
I'm pretty sure BSD *does* run on PPC hardware. NetBSD certainly does, and I think FreeBSD does as well. And there's certainly no reason that Apple couldn't have ported one of the to PPC hardware if they'd wanted to. The reason they didn't is that they were starting with Next technologies, so they used the Next kernel.
I'm pretty sure what he's saying is that classic apps don't have memory protection from one another, which is true but irrelevant-- the way classic Mac apps are written, most of them would break if you tried to protect them from one another-- they're used to stomping on each others' memory at will.
The solution Apple hit upon was the next best thing-- put them in their own memory space all together, but protect them from other non-classic apps. There really isn't much you can do about this. OS X *is* a real Unix and is therefore (modulo kernel bugs and bad drivers) crash-proof. The classic environment crashes a fair amount, but with a little refinement it's not likely to be any worse than OS 9.
Linus is either ignorant about the way Mac apps work or unrealistic about Apple's ability to dictate to its developers. Apple has an enourmous installed base of applications designed for OS 9, and if they were to throw those out, there would be essentially no software for the new OS. If, on the other hand, they had tried to design an OS that would support classic apps natively, they likely would have had to sacrifice system stability and performance to do it. Not only that, but if classic apps are supported natively, there's no incentive for developers to carbonize their apps, and therefore it's unlikely that the new API's will be widely used. This would greatly cripple Apple's ability to move the platform forward in the future.
This plan is a sensible middle path. It allows a migration path to fully buzzword compliant Carbon and Coacoa apps in the future. With any luck, all the important apps will have carbon versions by this time next year, and by the time OS XI (or whatever) ships, they can disable classic by default and run only native apps.
Look how long it's taken Microsoft to wean the Win 9x line of 16-bit apps-- they *still* have some hooks down to the lower levels of the OS 6 years after Win95 debuted. This is undoubtedly one of the causes of the OS's crappy stability and sluggish performance. Had they adopted a "virtual box" approach as Apple has, they'd probably have a much better OS today.
I agree that people should pay for the content they use, no question about it. I am strongly considering becoming a salon member. My point, though, is that while TiVo is not "for" blocking commercials, it makes it ludicrously easy, and so functinoally there isn't any difference. Blocking commercials is one of the the *major* functions of a TiVo, even if it isn't the only function.
OK, but the only way this really affects them differently is that while online advertising revenue can theoretically go to zero (if everyone uses blocking software) commercials will always have some people who sit through them. That's a valid point. However I don't think the difference is as big as you might think.
First, I think the number of people who would skip commercials if they had a TiVo is higher than you'd think, There are lots of ways to use a TiVo to skip commercials. For example, you can watch two stations at once, and every other show you switch between them, thus allowing you to watch two hours of TV in an hour and a half by skipping the commercials. Or, if you find a long show you like, you can watch the first segment, hit pause, and then go make dinner or something, come back, and the thing's all buffered up for you.
In addition, a *lot* of people will find it convenient to use the "always record show X" feature to just record the shows they like and watch them at their convenience. The main reason people don't do this with VCR's now is that it's a pain and you have to buy new tapes all the time. The combination of the fact that TiVo knows what's on TV (and does a hell of a lot better job than VCR+) and the fact that a random-access digital device doesn't need to worry about "recording over" another of your favorite shows means that people can set things up to record several hours of content, and then can sit down and watch that content whenever they like, commercial free, and it'll probably be better than whatever's on live TV anyway.
On the other hand, I strongly doubt adbuster type software will every achieve 100% market penetration. The reason is that long before that happens the ad-makers will get creative about how they package the ads to defeat the filters. There are lots of ways to do this. First, you can make the ads different sizes. Second, increase the number of servers you serve from, or better yet, serve ads from the same domain that you serve your content from. Sure it's a pain to keep track of, but the big sites shouldn't have any problem. You'll get an arms race between adsters and filters, and the vast majority of web users will remain behind the curve and still see a lot of ads.
So ultimately I think both forms of advertising are in trouble in the long term, and that in the short term neither is going to be hurt that much because the market penetration of these respective technologies is fairly low. But once people start buying TiVo's, the effect on TV revenues will be every bit as devastating as when people install ad-blocking software on their browsers.
However, it is completely different than fast forwarding through commercials because.. well, you can't. Even with a tivo it's not the same as filtering ad banners.
You can and it is. If you start watching a show 10 or 15 minutes after its live airtime, you can skip by the commercials in a couple of seconds. That's indistinguishable from having them filtered out for you.
There are only two fundamental differences. First, TiVo is more expensive than blocking software. It's only a matter of time before it gets cheaper. Two, TiVo is only effective if you start watching a show several minutes after it goes on the air (so the commercials can get buffered out) but that's not a big deal, and if you run out of buffer you can pause and come back in 10 minutes when the buffer's filled back up.
Beyond that, the analogy between TiVo and blocking software is perfect-- TiVo can be used to painlessly filter out TV commercials, and blocking software painlessly filters out ads. If things go as I think they're likely to, both will lead to large drops in their respective ad revenues and major changes in the structure of the web and TV industries.
Personally I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not. I think subscription-based services might be better in some ways, as it promotes reader loyalty and provides a more stable revenue stream. On the other hand, only the cream of the crop will be able to get subscription revenue, so maybe that's not so great. Either way, though, TiVo and add blocking are fundamentally similar in terms of their function and their likely effect on their respective industries. I don't see how you can really be for one and against the other-- either advertising is a good way to fund content or it isn't.
Fine, but then you should be willing to pay for the content you consume as salon is asking its readers to do. Otherwise you're mooching off of the money or click-throughs of other readers. One way or the other you're a free-rider.
The fact that they can't affordably prevent you from free-riding doesn't make it right. If everyone blocked ads *and* refused to pay subscription fees, all the content on the web would dry up and blow away. You can certainly mooch off the rest of us if you want to, but I don't think it's right. One way or the other, you should pay your fair share-- journalists have to eat.
I would expect it to be less than 1%. Indeed, if you actually look at some usage logs, you'll probably find that all email and news traffic don't come to a tenth, or anywhere close.
Most net traffic is pr0n or MP3 trading. Other web traffic is the next largest draw. Email and newsgroups are at best a distant fourth.
So, let's say that SMTP and NNTP traffic is 10% (which I suspect is rather high) Then even assuming that 30-40% of news and mail traffic is spam (which I highly doubt-- for me it's less than 5%) then we're only talking 3-4%. I suspect the actual share of mail and news traffic is less than 5% (we are talking plain text here) and the percentage of spam is more like 10%. In that case we're talking a half-percent of bandwidth usage, not 10%.
If you're careful about who you give your email address to, spam really isn't that big of a deal. I've had the same email address for three years now, and I get less than one piece of spam a day. The trick is to just not give out your personal email address to people you don't trust. Set up a second email address to give to web sites and other public places. And change that every year or two if it starts getting bombarded with spam.
Furthermore, if the bandwidth usage is as large as you claim, ISP's themselves will start shutting spammers down, and will begin to institute measures to prevent this abuse of their networks. No ISP wants to waste precious bandwidth on a usage that's going to piss off their upstream providers.
Java: Yes, Microsoft tried to embrace, extend and extinguish it. And they failed miserably. There are still plenty of pure Java apps that work cross-platform.
Office: Word and Excel started out on the Mac, and Mac versions of Office are still every bit as good as their Windows counterparts. Office 2001 has been a huge cash cow for MS, and they've committed to port to OS X. It's highly unlikely that they'll be cancelling support or making crippleware versions of Office for Mac any times soon-- the market is just too lucrative.
IE: IE for Mac is arguably the best web browser on the market. I use it on a daily basis, and I've rarely had problems with it. It's head and shoulders above Netscape for Mac, and is in some ways better than IE for Windows.
NT: yes, there were perfunctory attempts to make NT cross-platform, but those died pretty fast. And it's not like Microsoft had anything to gain by screwing over the PPC or the Alpha-- they don't have a major stake in the x86 market. The simple fact was that x86 was cheapest and had the largest market share and most mature base of compatible hardware. Supporting the other platforms simply wasn't worth the effort.
Now, with that said, if I were a Linux user I would be extremely suspicious of running Microsoft products, because you're right-- they probably will produce half-assed versions of.net for alternative platforms. But it's not like this is going to allow them to take over the free software market.
In addition, the Open Source community is amazingly good at reverse-engineering closed protocols and writing compatible Unix versions. If.net takes off, I'm sure within a matter of months someone will reverse engineer the protocols and file formats and write an open source clone that the community can use to connect to.net services. Samba allows us to interconnect Windows and Unix file and print services, without any help from MS. Why would.net be any different?
The only way they could prevent this is by shutting down the internet itself or by banning general-purpose computers. Corporations might have a lot of influence, but even they aren't going to do that. They *will* fail evenutally, it's just a matter of time.
You have to differentiate the filename from the file itself. This pig-latin thing encrypts *filenames,* not files. So if you see a file called "ackstreetB oysB," it's not a violation of the DMCA to download it.
What *would* be a violation (at least according to the aimster people) is if the RIAA wrote a program that converted "ackstreetB oysB" to "Backstreet Boys" and then used that to search for pig-latinized filenames, because that program would be a "circumvention device" and would violate your copywrite on the names of your files.
So as long as they do the "decryption" by hand, they aren't breaking the law. It's when they write code to "circumvent" the encryption that they get into trouble.
It's all pretty funny and pokes fun at silly laws, but seriously, do we want it known how easy it is to get past filters (so that they find a better way to control copyrighted music)?
Yes we do, for the simple reason that they will fail miserably, and so the sooner this happens the sooner we can all get on with our lives.
They are never going to find a way to prevent the distribution of copyrighted music. All they can do is spend billions of dollars harrassing those who do. Unless they're willing to throw every Napster user in jail (which would be an enourmous PR disaster) they're simply not going to be able to stop it. So the sooner we demonstrate that, the sooner they'll leave us alone.
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Point taken. However, if this page is correct, there are efforts under way to port it, and OpenBSD apperantly has been ported. The bottom line is that BSD is plenty available on PPC hardware, and if Apple had wanted to use a different flavor they could have done so.
I really hope you're trolling and not serious. Or maybe you're 15 and have nothing better to do than launch idle insults at random people for no good reason. I guess I shouldn't have expected a rational discussion on a slashdot forum anyway.
Good riddance.
Well, yeah, but how does that apply to the bundling issue. Are you saying that it's legal to bundle physical items, but software is different? What if your Windows liscence allowed to be transferred? Would that be legal? Do you honestly believe that would make a shred of difference in the court of law?
The point of these class action suits isn't whether or not they get a license, it's whether or not you have a choice. And up until recently, the average consumer that lacked the know-how to build their own machine was without choice if they wanted to buy from a reliable OEM.
Sure, but I still think my analogy to Apple holds. If I have a right to PC hardware without a copy of Windows, don't I have a right to PPC hardware without a copy of Mac OS? My question is: how is this different?
The real difference is that Microsoft has a larger market share, and hence lawyers can get more money out of them. But as a matter of law and economics, what's the difference? Judge Jackson ruled that the "relevant market" for Microsoft was PC consumer OS's, so it would seem that there is a similar market for antitrust purposes for Mac hardware. If that's the case, Apple's far more of a monopolist than Microsoft is.
The logic of your position seems to me to lead to the conclusion that no company can ever enter into exclusive bundling arrangements. Does that mean that nVidia got too much market share, OEMs wouldn't be allowed to sign exclusive deals with them to bundle in all of their computers? Or if I don't like the hard drive in one of Compaq's computers, do I have a right to demand they put in a different one of those?
Law has to be objective and clear to everyone who applies it. I hope I'm not coming accross as just asking assinine questions to be annoying. It's crucial that antitrust law like all law be specific, clear, and universal. You can't have one set of rules for companies you like and another for those you don't, and you can't change the rules in the middle of the game. I believe that's what a lawsuit would mean-- Microsoft isn't being punished for breaking any identifiable law. They are being punished for making a product that some people don't like. I think that's bad law no matter how you slice it.
What I love about arguments like this on Slashdot is that one side usually takes a tone of moral superiority while simultaneously stooping to the crudest ad homs. Microsoft is so obviously evil that there's no point in having anything like rational argument on the subject. It's much more fun to use loaded words and denounce anyone who disagrees with you as a "stupid fuck" and an "idiot." Never mind the fact that I made a couple of (IMHO) valid points that need a response. If I'm so obviously wrong, you might want to at least *try* to respond to them, instead of just launching immediately into a tirade about how evil Microsoft is and how stupid I am.
My point was twofold. First, you do have options, just not with the big OEMs. Second, the reason for this is that 90%+ of consumers prefer Windows to the alternatives, and so that's what most companies offer. You didn't even try to respond to either of these points.
I hope that everyone on the anti-Microsoft is a stupid fuck like this idiot I'm responding to, as that will make it easier for Microsoft to get a fair outcome. Alas, I fear that some of Microsoft's critics are a bit more intelligent and are capable of coming up with some semblance of a rational argument.
No OS is crash proof.
Can you read? This is why I said "modulo bugs and crappy drivers." Obviously no OS is crash-proof, but some do a pretty good job of preventing apps from bringing the system down, while others (Mac OS and Win9x) are much easier for one app to crash.
And what do all of these OS's have in common? All of them require a high level of geekiness to install and use, and most of them have crappy GUI's and a very small installed software base. My grandmother is not going to run Lunix (whatever that is) to say nothing of Q-nix or Darwin. If you campare it to consumer-grade OS's (i.e. Mac OS) it holds up pretty well. By this standard, it would be illegal to charge anything for any software, since there are free alternatives (albeit lousy ones in some cases) for any application.
Programmers have to eat, you know.
I bet there were speakers, a modem, an ethernet jack, and dozens of other components in that laptop as well, to say nothing of all the bundled software. If you didn't want those, should you be able to demand refunds for those as well? Companies bundle products all the time. It's ludicrous to claim that you have a right to unbundle any product and demand a separate price for it.
This is bullshit. First of all, IBM fought cloners in court and lost. Most of them never lisenced IBM technology, and IBM never "opened up" their platform. It was forced open by black-box reverse engineering of their chipsets and extensive legal battles.
Secondly, Microsoft negotiates a separate contract with each of the major OEMs. Any one of them could tell MS to go to hell, and chances are all MS could do is raise the price of Windows. It's not Microsofts' fault that none of the OEMs have any balls.
Thirdly, you don't pay "full price" for pre-installed copies of Windows. Microsoft gives OEMs deep discounts, which presumably get passed on to the consumer.
Finally, at least MS liscences their OS. Apple doesn't even do that. If you want a Mac, you pay a "Mac OS tax" for the privilege. It's precisely the same issue. Can I sue Apple for not selling Macs without OS's? If not, then how is MS different?
Why do you think this is? Perhaps because the overwhelming majority of users prefer to have Windows on their machines? If there were really a huge outcry to offer alternative OS's, why wouldn't companies do so?
/.ers want a different OS on their machine doesn't give you the right to shove that decision down everyones' throat. If you think there's such a bid demand for this, I suggest you design your own laptop and offer whatever OS you want on it. But don't expect Dell and IBM to leap into action because you happen to dislike their offerings.
I would like a Ford car with a Chevy engine in it. I can't get it. Does that mean I'm paying a "Ford engine tax" if I go and swap out the engine myself. Am I paying a "prize tax" if I don't like the prize at the bottom of my box of cracker jacks?
Companies offer products that include things not everyone likes. That's life. They only offer what they think a large number of customers will buy. The fact that a few
This is complete and utter bullshit. This would imply that computer companies have an obligation to install your system exactly the way you want it, and if it takes you any time at all to set things up yourself, that's grounds for a lawsuit.
What if a computer comes with IE and I want Netscape instead? Can I sue about that? What if it has both and I want to delete them to save space. Can I sue for that? How about if I don't use the web and don't want any browser. Is that justification for a lawsuit as well?
By that logic computer companies would have to spend hours on each computer installing and removing software as the user demanded. That's absurd. Dell has a right to put any software they like on its machines. If you don't like that, you are free to buy another machine that comes with a clean hard drive. That's your choice. But you have no right to dictate to Dell what OS's it puts on its machines.
No you weren't. There are lots of companies that offer computers without MS's operating system on it. The fact that the particular system you wanted didn't come without Windows doesn't mean you were "forced" to purchase it. It just meant that you got a component you didn't want in with the components you did. If you didn't like the whole package, go elsewhere.
By this logic you should be able to demand any component of the computer removed-- you don't want any memory or a sound card-- and get a discount for it. Computers are package-deals. There are dozens of components, and different companies put different parts in. You are free to pick those you want.
If a lot of people wanted computers without Windows, more companies would offer that option. They don't because there isn't the demand. If they're wrong, smaller companies will gain market share by offering what their competitors can't.
So can you get a Dell or Compaq computer without Windows? Probably not. But who says you have a right to a Dell or Compaq computer in the first place. If you don't like the package, don't buy it.
Next time I go shopping I'm going to demand my cereal without the prize at the bottom. After all, all of the cereals I like "force" me to pay for little plastic toys I'll never play with. I'm being oppressed!
So selling a dangerous product is immoral? Keep in mind that every smoker has known he was killing himself for 30 years, yet he chose to do it anyway. Why? Because he decided the pleasure he got from smoking a cigarette was worth it. My question is: who are the tobacco companies to say otherwise? Why should they attempt to impose a different set of values on their customers?
There are lots of other dangerous products that kill people-- cars, fatty food, alchohol, etc. Are all of those companies guilty as well? After all, McDonalds would probably save lives if it offered only vegetarian food. The auto industry would save lives if it made cars that only went 30 MPH. Does that make them morally culpable when someone dies of a heart attack or in a car crash?
This is an issue of individual liberty-- are individuals responsible for their own choices, or is it the job of corporations (or government) to decide that some risks are too great to allow you to take?
Let me put it this way: what do you think the tobacco companies should have done? Just close up shop? They didn't profit by killing people. They profited by selling customers a product they like and enjoy. It would be arrogant and paternalistic for them to decide to stop offering that product because they didn't believe their customers were bright enough to make the decision for themselves.
If this were just about children smoking, I might be more sympathetic, but it's not. Tobacco lawsuits are a massive wealth transfer from smokers (who are generally poor) to lawyers (who are generally rich.) It's terrible policy, by any standard. It is doing nothing to prevent children from smoking, and nothing to help those who are "addicted" to cigarettes. All it does is raise the price of cigarettes and use the money to line lawyers' pockets and produce assinine anti-smoking ads that don't fool anyone.
Darwin is Apple's buzzwordy name for the core of their OS. It didn't exist until Apple bought out Next and opened up their code. So Darwin is an Apple-created Unix-flavored OS that lies beneath the pretty GUI in OS X. Darwin was *not* developed by CMU or anyone else. It was written by Next developers using BSD as a starting point, but wasn't called Darwin until Apple bought the company and opened the source in ~99.
Darwin is as much a BSD as any of the other flavors. It's built atop Mach because that's how Next did it, and they continued in that tradition. Mach is a microkernel, atop which rests a layer that implements a BSD interface.
I'm pretty sure BSD *does* run on PPC hardware. NetBSD certainly does, and I think FreeBSD does as well. And there's certainly no reason that Apple couldn't have ported one of the to PPC hardware if they'd wanted to. The reason they didn't is that they were starting with Next technologies, so they used the Next kernel.
I'm pretty sure what he's saying is that classic apps don't have memory protection from one another, which is true but irrelevant-- the way classic Mac apps are written, most of them would break if you tried to protect them from one another-- they're used to stomping on each others' memory at will.
The solution Apple hit upon was the next best thing-- put them in their own memory space all together, but protect them from other non-classic apps. There really isn't much you can do about this. OS X *is* a real Unix and is therefore (modulo kernel bugs and bad drivers) crash-proof. The classic environment crashes a fair amount, but with a little refinement it's not likely to be any worse than OS 9.
Linus is either ignorant about the way Mac apps work or unrealistic about Apple's ability to dictate to its developers. Apple has an enourmous installed base of applications designed for OS 9, and if they were to throw those out, there would be essentially no software for the new OS. If, on the other hand, they had tried to design an OS that would support classic apps natively, they likely would have had to sacrifice system stability and performance to do it. Not only that, but if classic apps are supported natively, there's no incentive for developers to carbonize their apps, and therefore it's unlikely that the new API's will be widely used. This would greatly cripple Apple's ability to move the platform forward in the future.
This plan is a sensible middle path. It allows a migration path to fully buzzword compliant Carbon and Coacoa apps in the future. With any luck, all the important apps will have carbon versions by this time next year, and by the time OS XI (or whatever) ships, they can disable classic by default and run only native apps.
Look how long it's taken Microsoft to wean the Win 9x line of 16-bit apps-- they *still* have some hooks down to the lower levels of the OS 6 years after Win95 debuted. This is undoubtedly one of the causes of the OS's crappy stability and sluggish performance. Had they adopted a "virtual box" approach as Apple has, they'd probably have a much better OS today.
I agree that people should pay for the content they use, no question about it. I am strongly considering becoming a salon member. My point, though, is that while TiVo is not "for" blocking commercials, it makes it ludicrously easy, and so functinoally there isn't any difference. Blocking commercials is one of the the *major* functions of a TiVo, even if it isn't the only function.
OK, but the only way this really affects them differently is that while online advertising revenue can theoretically go to zero (if everyone uses blocking software) commercials will always have some people who sit through them. That's a valid point. However I don't think the difference is as big as you might think.
First, I think the number of people who would skip commercials if they had a TiVo is higher than you'd think, There are lots of ways to use a TiVo to skip commercials. For example, you can watch two stations at once, and every other show you switch between them, thus allowing you to watch two hours of TV in an hour and a half by skipping the commercials. Or, if you find a long show you like, you can watch the first segment, hit pause, and then go make dinner or something, come back, and the thing's all buffered up for you.
In addition, a *lot* of people will find it convenient to use the "always record show X" feature to just record the shows they like and watch them at their convenience. The main reason people don't do this with VCR's now is that it's a pain and you have to buy new tapes all the time. The combination of the fact that TiVo knows what's on TV (and does a hell of a lot better job than VCR+) and the fact that a random-access digital device doesn't need to worry about "recording over" another of your favorite shows means that people can set things up to record several hours of content, and then can sit down and watch that content whenever they like, commercial free, and it'll probably be better than whatever's on live TV anyway.
On the other hand, I strongly doubt adbuster type software will every achieve 100% market penetration. The reason is that long before that happens the ad-makers will get creative about how they package the ads to defeat the filters. There are lots of ways to do this. First, you can make the ads different sizes. Second, increase the number of servers you serve from, or better yet, serve ads from the same domain that you serve your content from. Sure it's a pain to keep track of, but the big sites shouldn't have any problem. You'll get an arms race between adsters and filters, and the vast majority of web users will remain behind the curve and still see a lot of ads.
So ultimately I think both forms of advertising are in trouble in the long term, and that in the short term neither is going to be hurt that much because the market penetration of these respective technologies is fairly low. But once people start buying TiVo's, the effect on TV revenues will be every bit as devastating as when people install ad-blocking software on their browsers.
However, it is completely different than fast forwarding through commercials because.. well, you can't. Even with a tivo it's not the same as filtering ad banners.
You can and it is. If you start watching a show 10 or 15 minutes after its live airtime, you can skip by the commercials in a couple of seconds. That's indistinguishable from having them filtered out for you.
There are only two fundamental differences. First, TiVo is more expensive than blocking software. It's only a matter of time before it gets cheaper. Two, TiVo is only effective if you start watching a show several minutes after it goes on the air (so the commercials can get buffered out) but that's not a big deal, and if you run out of buffer you can pause and come back in 10 minutes when the buffer's filled back up.
Beyond that, the analogy between TiVo and blocking software is perfect-- TiVo can be used to painlessly filter out TV commercials, and blocking software painlessly filters out ads. If things go as I think they're likely to, both will lead to large drops in their respective ad revenues and major changes in the structure of the web and TV industries.
Personally I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not. I think subscription-based services might be better in some ways, as it promotes reader loyalty and provides a more stable revenue stream. On the other hand, only the cream of the crop will be able to get subscription revenue, so maybe that's not so great. Either way, though, TiVo and add blocking are fundamentally similar in terms of their function and their likely effect on their respective industries. I don't see how you can really be for one and against the other-- either advertising is a good way to fund content or it isn't.
Fine, but then you should be willing to pay for the content you consume as salon is asking its readers to do. Otherwise you're mooching off of the money or click-throughs of other readers. One way or the other you're a free-rider.
The fact that they can't affordably prevent you from free-riding doesn't make it right. If everyone blocked ads *and* refused to pay subscription fees, all the content on the web would dry up and blow away. You can certainly mooch off the rest of us if you want to, but I don't think it's right. One way or the other, you should pay your fair share-- journalists have to eat.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea
Actually, it was Western civilisation, not American culture.
I would expect it to be less than 1%. Indeed, if you actually look at some usage logs, you'll probably find that all email and news traffic don't come to a tenth, or anywhere close.
Most net traffic is pr0n or MP3 trading. Other web traffic is the next largest draw. Email and newsgroups are at best a distant fourth.
So, let's say that SMTP and NNTP traffic is 10% (which I suspect is rather high) Then even assuming that 30-40% of news and mail traffic is spam (which I highly doubt-- for me it's less than 5%) then we're only talking 3-4%. I suspect the actual share of mail and news traffic is less than 5% (we are talking plain text here) and the percentage of spam is more like 10%. In that case we're talking a half-percent of bandwidth usage, not 10%.
If you're careful about who you give your email address to, spam really isn't that big of a deal. I've had the same email address for three years now, and I get less than one piece of spam a day. The trick is to just not give out your personal email address to people you don't trust. Set up a second email address to give to web sites and other public places. And change that every year or two if it starts getting bombarded with spam.
Furthermore, if the bandwidth usage is as large as you claim, ISP's themselves will start shutting spammers down, and will begin to institute measures to prevent this abuse of their networks. No ISP wants to waste precious bandwidth on a usage that's going to piss off their upstream providers.
Java: Yes, Microsoft tried to embrace, extend and extinguish it. And they failed miserably. There are still plenty of pure Java apps that work cross-platform.
.net for alternative platforms. But it's not like this is going to allow them to take over the free software market.
.net takes off, I'm sure within a matter of months someone will reverse engineer the protocols and file formats and write an open source clone that the community can use to connect to .net services. Samba allows us to interconnect Windows and Unix file and print services, without any help from MS. Why would .net be any different?
Office: Word and Excel started out on the Mac, and Mac versions of Office are still every bit as good as their Windows counterparts. Office 2001 has been a huge cash cow for MS, and they've committed to port to OS X. It's highly unlikely that they'll be cancelling support or making crippleware versions of Office for Mac any times soon-- the market is just too lucrative.
IE: IE for Mac is arguably the best web browser on the market. I use it on a daily basis, and I've rarely had problems with it. It's head and shoulders above Netscape for Mac, and is in some ways better than IE for Windows.
NT: yes, there were perfunctory attempts to make NT cross-platform, but those died pretty fast. And it's not like Microsoft had anything to gain by screwing over the PPC or the Alpha-- they don't have a major stake in the x86 market. The simple fact was that x86 was cheapest and had the largest market share and most mature base of compatible hardware. Supporting the other platforms simply wasn't worth the effort.
Now, with that said, if I were a Linux user I would be extremely suspicious of running Microsoft products, because you're right-- they probably will produce half-assed versions of
In addition, the Open Source community is amazingly good at reverse-engineering closed protocols and writing compatible Unix versions. If
The only way they could prevent this is by shutting down the internet itself or by banning general-purpose computers. Corporations might have a lot of influence, but even they aren't going to do that. They *will* fail evenutally, it's just a matter of time.
You have to differentiate the filename from the file itself. This pig-latin thing encrypts *filenames,* not files. So if you see a file called "ackstreetB oysB," it's not a violation of the DMCA to download it.
What *would* be a violation (at least according to the aimster people) is if the RIAA wrote a program that converted "ackstreetB oysB" to "Backstreet Boys" and then used that to search for pig-latinized filenames, because that program would be a "circumvention device" and would violate your copywrite on the names of your files.
So as long as they do the "decryption" by hand, they aren't breaking the law. It's when they write code to "circumvent" the encryption that they get into trouble.
It's all pretty funny and pokes fun at silly laws, but seriously, do we want it known how easy it is to get past filters (so that they find a better way to control copyrighted music)?
Yes we do, for the simple reason that they will fail miserably, and so the sooner this happens the sooner we can all get on with our lives.
They are never going to find a way to prevent the distribution of copyrighted music. All they can do is spend billions of dollars harrassing those who do. Unless they're willing to throw every Napster user in jail (which would be an enourmous PR disaster) they're simply not going to be able to stop it. So the sooner we demonstrate that, the sooner they'll leave us alone.