Well, actually Windows 98 is pretty difficult to secure.
In particular, I would point out the large number of local root exploits.
Uhm... Windows 98 is a local root exploit. With no user permission levels, local roots become meaningless.
More interesting would be the number of remote roots (probably fairly small, as only NetBIOS runs normally IIRC), or remote DOS'es (fairly large, IIRPingOfDeathC).
If someone forked off the beta into opengfs, that's fine, but consider that you can fork off whatever you want, you'll never get the (c) of the forked off code. This seems legal due to the GPL, but is it? Sistina still owns the (c) of the code in OpenGFS. And because they own it, what will stop them to go to court and ask the judge to stop the opengfs project, since Sistina is the owner of the code in that project and can do whatever they want with it, GPL or not.
But you're forgetting the actual text of the GPL -- Sistina has essentially given the world-at-large permission to do whatever they want with the beta code, and the GPL license is not revocable once given.
I'm saying this because in the Netherlands there are cases where a programmer worked on project A, left the company, company sold project A to another company which made a huge profit. Because the programmer didn't sign a copyright traversal agreement with his original company, he still was the owner. He went to court and asked for a lot of money or the termination of the project A. The judge agreed that he still was the owner and had every right on the money earned by the second company.
That's an entirely different argument. In these cases, the company is technicially distributing code without ownership or permission, an outright violation of copyright law. Had the programmer given the company permission to sublicense, distribute, and sell the code [all of which are not granted by normal copyright law but are by ther GPL], there would have been no case.
But you could do this right now with NAT and a single address. Why do you need IPv6 to do it?
No, you cannot. If my fridge were connected to the Internet via NAT, I would not be able to get to it from the outside. A demonstration for you and everyone else who thinks that NAT is a cure-all:
My house's IP is 185.12.16.192 [not my real IP. Don't try it. I don't know who's it is, if anyone's]. That IP is directly connected to a Linux NAT box [or Linksys router, if you prefer.] By definition of NAT, it takes outgoing requests from local bits [192.168.x.x], munges with the TCP/IP headers, and routes them to the outside world. It then keeps watch for reply contacts and does the reverse header-munging.
My fridge is connected to my local network. From its point of view, its only IP is 192.168.1.17.
Now, I'm at the supermarket and want to check how much milk I have left. I can get to the house no problem [see above IP], but there's no way I can get to the fridge. I cannot simply direct a request to the fridge because there is no way for me to reach the fridge -- it has no address from my point of view. The NAT box won't help, either, because my connection is not in reply to a fridge outgoing request, so the NAT box doesn't know to do its header munging/routing. It is possible to get around this through port forwarding or a seperate protocol, but the former is an ugly hack and the latter is an ugly hack that requires a special forwarding deamon to be running on the NAT box.
With IPv6, the only bits of the system that still remain are the local router, the fridge, and the supermarket. This time around, the fridge has an outside-addressable IP. The local router doesn't need to do any header-munging, and in fact is transparent to the entire process.
Implementations of NAT to hide extensive local networks function to approximately the same degree as trying to place a phone call to the Andromeda galaxy -- you don't exactly know where your recipiant is, so you can't get the message to it.
Sorry, but you are mistaken. Monopoly status is not concerned with the accumulation of mindshare and capital. Its all about two things, whne you boil it down to a slashdot sized argument. First, whether or not they can raise prices without retribution in the marketplace. A monopoly can raise prices to any extent they want without loss of share. A monopoly can take an elastic marketplace and make it an inelestic marketplace. Can MS do this? Ask yourself if Windows 98 raised the price of my machine $100, would I still buy the machine? $200? $300? $500? $1000? $2500? Okay, that one is solved. The answer is of course no.
Incorrect.
A monopoly is not about making people pay arbitrary prices, as people will simply not pay for [and forego] the product if it is too expensive, especially for non-vital items like PC's. A monopoly about one company owning such a large market share that they are capable of setting the market price for an item. It is a subtle, but vital difference.
If Microsoft suddenly started charging everyone $5,000 for an OS license, the price of a PC that the Average User gets from Dell [at least and especially in the short term] would increase approximately $5,000. Likewise, if OPEC [a definite monopoly] started charging $100/barrel, the price of oil on the open market would increase approximately $100/barrel. The overall demand for oil/PC's would shrink to the point that can be sustained at that price, but the price is still fixed.
Now, let's contrast that with a currently competitive market -- corn [ignoring government subsidies for the moment -- we're not decreasing the price]. If nameless corporate farming chain A started charging $100/bushel for corn, people would laugh at them and not buy corn from them. The market price for corn would increase marginially because the supply is not there, but it would not increase to anywhere near $100.
Second, monopoly status is about being able to create unreasonably high entry costs to competition, and therefore, stifle it before ever taking hold. Ask youself, are there more choices today for opeating systems for the x86 platform then there was in 1990? If you answered yes, then you are correct. Linux successfull has developed into a robust desktop operating system. That would be impossible if MS had the ability to raise entry costs. The mere existenance of Linux proves beyond any reasonable doubt that MS isn't a monopoly.
You seem to be under the assumption that barriers to entry must always be monetary. This does not have to be the case.
Because Microsoft owns the single largest market suite and the single largest web browser, and they only support them on Windows and non-competing markets [Mac, Solaris for IE], any competing x86 operating system is going to have to create one of each. To create a market-viable operating system, the programming team needs to create applications not related to the OS itself -- aka barrier to entry. Linux, you would argue, is already there -- I'm not quite sure if I agree withh you, but let's say they are and move on to the next point.
Microsoft's most valid, if dubiously supported, argument against the widespread adoption of Linux, especially in the high-$$$ corporate environments, is the cost of retraining. Secretaries would have to be retrained, to some degree, to work with FooOffice and Bar Desktop on top of Linux. Likewise, you'd probably need a new sysadmin, although that's a minor, minor part of the total cost. Microsoft, along with the MBA's of the world, call this Total Cost of Ownership. In reality, it's a barrier to entry in the marketplace. Microsoft's monopoly has created One Way to Do Things, and any marginally different way is going to cost lots of dollars.
Now, let's look at that in another semi-competitive consumer/buisness market: cars. People use cars everyday. Most people don't particularly care about what type of car they are using. Most people can switch from one type of car to another without a major hassle. Different models of cars are definitely different machines, but one company has not become so dominant that everybody learns the Ford Way of Doing Things, becoming incapable of doing anything different.
This doesn't exactly look like it's Microsoft's fault, but I reference the first paragraph in this section -- Microsoft owns the office suite and web browser, and will not port them to alternative operating systems. If a third-party company had the most popular office suite, say Corel, the odds are much greater that you'd see a version for any and every operating system that looks like it stands a chance of gaining marketshare. The main consumer reason for not upgrading is the Catch-22 of not enough programs, but it's Microsoft, through leverage of the Office near-monopoly especially, that starts the cycle in the first place.
Here is the central question: Today, in the year 2001, can you or can you not choose your desktop operating system, with regards to the x86 platform?
No.
Don't get me wrong, there are obviously other operating systems out there, but calling them competition is a real stretch. Of the four major OEM's, at least three of them [I haven't exactly kept track] do not offer non-windows OS's preinstalled. I cannot walk into a Gateway store and return with a Linux box. I doubt that most of the people who work at said store would even know what FreeBSD is, let alone laugh at me when I request a box with it installed.
The OEM is also the only way an Average User is going to get an operating system installed on his machine. In an era when boardroom wars go on about which bloody icons are going to show up on the default desktop, expecting the Average User to find, buy, and install his OS of choice is a real stretch, even if that OS is Windows.
Simply put, if Dell won't sell it, it doesn't exist in the minds of the Average User. Linux may, may be _beginning_ to enter the realm of competition, as a couple OEM's are sometimes selling boxes with it installed -- this from an OS that is as old as Windows and inarguably more stable and efficent at the kernel level [1]. The remainder of those sixty OSes simply don't exist, for all intents and purposes.
[1] - I don't care whether a driver caused it or not, I should not be getting segfaults in kernel32.dll, no matter whether it's 9x or NT.
At any rate, in the game of Axis & Allies that is the OS war, we'll call Microsoft facist Germany, GNU will be the Soviet Union, and for the role of the political moderates (relatively speaking), we have corporations like IBM and RedHat as the US and the UK. Now all we need is somebody to play Japan...
That'd be the BSA, which causes IBM's entry into the conflagaration with a suprise audit at Perl Harbor.
Re:CE is part of the problem
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 1
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIIIV IIVIIIIIIVIII...
I don't think that the Romans had a concept of decimals, as they didn't have a concept of zero.
Re:Making sure to shoot both feet...
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 1
But this has got to be the stupidest move they've ever done, quite possibly the stupidest thing any marketing deparment has ever done in the history of marketing.
No, the stupidest thing ever done in the history of marketing was leaving the car model name "Nova" unchanged for a Mexican release -- "Nova" == "No go" in Spanish.
Releasing a dubiously better console through a bundle package that doubles the initial price does seem to come close, though.
On a slight tangent, has Microsoft even released the final specs yet? Their website doesn't have it, whereas the Gamecube and PS2 both have a full spec list up.
In my opinion (you didn't ask, but you're getting it anyway:), every vote should have been counted, and if there was any ambiguity in the vote, toss it. Lesson learned; don't use overly complicated voting systems. Seriously, what's the problem with having the names lined up on one side, and the marking points on the other? Who the
With a punch-card system, if the names are all lined up on one side, they have to be really tiny [single-lines]. Then you get flack from people who couldn't read the ballot. A butterfly ballot allows candidate names to be double-height.
drizzling shit came up with those 50 000 different voting systems, anyway? Doesn't anyone take that shit seriously enough to think that maybe, just maybe, voting systems should be consistent?
Um... the counties? The Federal elections weren't the only ones going on on Nov. 7'th, you know -- state and local candidates were running, also. A county with 200 candidates for a given position may feasibly need a different ballot design than one with 2.
Essentially, a geosynchronous orbit can be achieved at any altitude, but it must be over the Equator (as I already explained to someone else) and the speed that the satellite must move is directly proportional to the altitude.
Incorrect. You are neglecting, sir, the force of gravity vs. the centripedal force required.
By your definition, I'm would be in a geosynchronous orbit if I were standing on the equator, although I am obviously not orbiting.
The centripedal force required to maintain a circular path increases proportionally to the radius from the center of the circle (r*omega squard). The force of gravity that provides this centripedal force, however, decreases with the square of the radius from the center of the earth/orbit/circle. As it turns out, the only place where those two forces match is at the altitude required for geosynchronous orbit. An object below the geosynchronous altitude with the required angular velocity will fall to the earth (see: yourself), and one above it will form an elliptical orbit or fly off into space. [I really don't feel like doing the calculations now]
You can have a geosynchronously moving bit at any altitude or line of latitude but both require powered station-keeping -- I could be in a geosynchronous 'orbit' right now if I could generate 9.8 m/s^2 accelearation under my chair.
For all intentes and purposes, howerver, satellites require unpowered station-keeping, resulting in a fixed geosynchronous altitude.
As a further aside, what about the US' last elections? This article talks about the military role is those elections and is based primarily on an article written by The New York Times. If the conclusions in the article are valid (and only you the reader can decide that) then the US has taken a step off of democracy's road and onto the road of authoritarianism.
As a resident of Florida, let me clarify this. Military absentee ballots sent from overseas or on-board ships were supposed to arrive by a given date with an overseas postmark. Unfortunately, ballots sent from on-board ships either didn't receive a postmark or didn't receive a foreign postmark, and hence were rejected due to an oversight in the law.
The majority of the rejected ballots were eventually added into the total. There was no 'military veto' over the presidential election, and the Gore-platform quotes in WSWS were taken out of context to imply that Gore was scared of the military; in reality (as opposed to delusion-land of WSWS), Gore didn't want the military's morale to slip at the implied "I don't care about you or your votes." Not a good thing when some data had shown that military readiness and effectiveness was already slipping.
So far as I understand it, it doesn't really matter who owns the cells. Since they're self-reproducing, the second any company or university sells a single live cell the supply of that line is irrevocably and permanently unrestricted, as the people too whom they sold the cell can now grow and cell more.
Kinda like open source/Free Software, in a way -- once it's out there, there's no putting the cat back in the bag.
"Adobe applauds RosettaBooks for being the first to explore the opportunities that `timed' eBooks bring to the publishing market," said Susan Altman Prescott, Vice President of Marketing, Cross Media Publishing at Adobe. "Timed eBooks offered in Adobe PDF open a number of innovative ways for publishers to market and sell books. For example, they offer a cost-effective way to distribute review copies and bound galleys with the layout, fonts and graphics intact."
Actually, the specific examples aren't bad use of the technology. Review copies and galleys are both rather special cases, and at least in the case of the review copies they're often not the book + final cover anyway. Do notice, however, that there's no inherent advantage to the 'timed' bit of the pdf, and also the veep made no real mention of distributing mass quanatities of e-books.
I really couldn't believe the total lack of respect and ethical disregard these kids had for sys administration. I know that people need time to adjust to the responsibilities, but these kids didn't seem to. They just thought it was "cool" to keep flood pinging other servers, nmap'ing people, etc. I don't know what these kids aren't learning, but I don't see the evolution of sys admins as being a bright future if this attitude continues.
You should have just stressed the (il)legal aspect of what they were doing. Arguments based upon a moral/honor code are only valid to people who share the same perception of morality, yet the law is (in most cases) farily clear.
I happen to aggree with the parent post here. All of the truly brilliant 15-year-olds, like Katz's review and promotion of a sensationalized book mentions, are not widely known online aas 15-year olds: act with maturity and the default assumption is that you are an adult.
That's what, 3 DSL lines? $60 a month? As long as you put the TIVO (not literally) at the phone company what's stopping us from video on demand at $60/month? 95% of your DSL bandwidth limits happen after you get to the phone company, not before. Hell, I don't need HDTV quality. DVD quality is more like 6Mbps, or $20/month.
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's unconstitutional
From whom are you buying your DSL, and where can I get some? Full T1 speeds are 1.5MBPS, and that's where most comsumer DSL tops out -- buisnesses can sometimes pay \$$Largenum for Multi-Mb/S RADSL lines, but you're still not going to get 20Mbps for under $300/mo or so.
Also, most of that cheap DSL shares your voice line -- any dedicated line is going to cost you for the second/third/tenth line.
Re:Stop whining about HDTV
on
HDTV Over IP
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Studio's hate HDTV. Why? Because it ruins a very important Video market. They now count on the fact that VCR's make low quality, grainy copies of on-air content. This means they can make tons of bank on [insert fav show here] box sets. Once you deal with a digital format they are sunk. People can now make a high quality recording for personal use. Hence no reason to buy an over priced box set from the local retailer.
Hell no. Having a family member that worked in broadcasting for 20 years, I can tell you that the reason that no one's producing HDTV equipment is cost.
You think that the _consumer_ gear costs an arm and a leg? Just try upgrading the cameras, monitors, editing equipment, and mastering equipment. For each studio.
On the station side, you're going to need a new control room, bloody TRANSMITTER [horribly expensive pieces of equipment], and sometimes a tower to boot, addition to ugrading the news studios and remote trucks (mirowave and satellite links).
And all that for crappy programming that three people in the entire country own the equipment to see in the native resolution.
On the plus side, it looks like apt-get and the like aren't strictly in violation: all but a couple of the claims specificially deal with an "Internet browser" or "web browser".
This was filed in 1998. Do any ASP's go bakk before then?
12. A computer program product for execution by a server computer for enabling the maintenance of a remote user computer coupled to the server computer over a network, comprising:
computer code for receiving a user request from the remote user computer, said user request being entered by the user via a web browser;
computer code for instantiating a download of a maintenance software package to a storage medium connected to the user computer via the web browser; and
computer code for causing said maintenance software to automatically execute on the user computer subsequent to downloading;
whereby, responsive only to said user-entered request via said web browser, advanced maintenance routines may be performed on said user computer without requiring local maintenance commands from said user.
Take a look at the last clause -- does it look like every buffer-overflow ever created is covered?:)
Actually, take a look at it -- ANY of the IE "user goes to a site and gets r00ted" buffer overflows would be prior art on this claim. HTML/the web server would serve as computer code entered by a web browser (the URL). A redirector (or the page itself) would contain the buffer overflow -- computer code which initiates the download/overflow, which is thereby executed. Should that do anything to the computer, it's 'maintinance.'
Also, take a gander at claims 1 and 14 -- it looks like buffer overflows would apply to those.
In short, McAfee's claiming a patent on any download by a web browser that is automaticially executed without any further user input that the initiation of the download -- they extend that to cover specific types of those downloads & the server-side code, but that's what the most general claims are.
Revolt against Microsoft software. We'd all love for this to happen, but their PR machine is probably too good. Still, we can always hope people realize that MS bears a large part of the responsibility here.
As much as I like the idea of Microsoft paying through the nose, I would really it rather not happen because of Code Red. Why? Because Microsoft really isn't to blame here.
The security flaw was exposed to the public (not kept secret), and a patch was released & made available a full month before the main CR outbreak. They did everything they reasonably should have.
Internet Collapses. I really doubt it, I just had to say it to satisfy Cringley:-) Seriously, though, things may get slow, but I have a feeling vigilante efforts (counter-worms, Apache scripts that reboot infected attacking Win boxes, etc.) will keep this from happening.
Actually, I woldn't particularly mind it if every AOL/MSN/Etc. subscriber decided that the Internet was too dangerous and unplugged their computer. More bandwidth for me.:)
Re:Something that should happen more often.
on
Code Red Back For More
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Man, I'm glad that I'm not using Minesweeper. This new virus exploits an unexploded mine in Minesweeper, and it does use Outlook and the stupidity of users. Luckily, I'm running OpenMine, so I'm not at risk. In fact, OpenMine has protected me from 2^37-302virii. And just look at the millions of dollars that I've saved using OpenMine. I hope that this OpenMine takes off, along with OS/2. Unfortunately, my doghouse has to pay for the stupidity of Microsoft: this virus sucked 212 nibbles of bandwidth!
Did anyone here read the Technical Overview! They must have really been excited about the P4's architecture. It seems like every other sentance ends in an exclamation point!
"This means that the higher levels don't have to experience a cache miss before moving to the data in the second array, while the 32-byte-line design would! This has the benefit of greatly decreasing average memory access latencies for contiguously used data!"
I have honestly never seen anyone more excited about CPU Caches.
I say repeal the Sherman act! But only one day two of my new regime. On day one I would repeal all of the myriad laws that limit competition and hinder voluntary economic transactions. Then on day two we wouldn't need the Sherman act...
Thank you Harry Browne. (Sorry, had to get that in. I'm of a largely libertarian political philosophy also.)
They say the sign of a real monopoly is the ability to set any price. But Microsoft can't do that. It can't price WinXP to the OEM's at $1000 (which, by the way, is still cheaper than most commercial Unices).
They can't? If they priced WinXP at $1,000/CPU and discontinued all new licensing for all other Microsoft Operating Systems (95-2K), what choice would the Compaq's and Dell's have?
Sure, they'd very quickly start selling systems with some variant of Linux (the only other x86 operating system big enough to get mentioned on CNBC), but here at Slashdot we know as well as anyone else that Linux is by no means ready for the Average User.)
Some consumers would balk at the LinPC's, some would accept the lack of familiarity (and from their perspective ease-of-use), and some would buckle down and learn to use Linux/X, but PC sales as a whole would drop for quite some time. My completely unsupported speculation is that PC sales would fall to a trickle for at least four months (my guess as to how long it would take the combined talent of the entire Linux community, Dell/Compaq, IBM, and several major corporations to collectively produce a workable Desktop Linux + Application Suite), where they would rebound.
For all intents and purposes, Microsoft can set whatever price they want in the absence of regulatory oversight. By setting an obscene price, however, they will kill the market entirely -- the consequence of monopolistic prices. People cannot simply turn to an alternative operating system for the moment -- the choice is Windows or No PC.
If you remember your economics, the natural state in a completely competitive economy is that prices fall to the point where suppliers cover little more than costs: without value added, margins are thin [See: printing industries, dot-where'd-That-Stock-Go?]; one firm raising prices just results in consumers switching to a different supplier [at presumably lower prices]. In a monopolistic situation, prices fall only to the point where the profits of the producing company is maximized. In the case of high-necessity items like food, that prics can be arbitrarially high; the PC is still, for the user, a luxury item and can be 'done without'.
Sounds like the only solution is to have ZERO MS software installed.
My solution of choice would be an encrypted file system combined with a remote 'format' key in the server room -- sure, it won't get finished on each & every desktop, but it (or something like that) could very well write enough random data to really mess up the software inventories.
Another question -- how does the software inventory work exactly? What does it check for?
Um... the GPL in no way requires a mod developer to release his changes to the public. If you read the GPL, it only requires that the source be released (freely) to people who have the binary -- the binary distribution can be restricted however you want from yourself.
With mainstream items, like the Kernel, that are used publicly, original recipients are quite likely to pass it on to more people (and more, etc.), essentially making the modification public. For more obscure bits, like a phone-switching system another poster mentioned, people who get the code have little to no incentive or desire to release it to other people who would have no use for it.
To reiterate, a modification not being available to the world at large is not in and of itself a violation of the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
In particular, I would point out the large number of local root exploits.
Uhm... Windows 98 is a local root exploit. With no user permission levels, local roots become meaningless.
More interesting would be the number of remote roots (probably fairly small, as only NetBIOS runs normally IIRC), or remote DOS'es (fairly large, IIRPingOfDeathC).
But you're forgetting the actual text of the GPL -- Sistina has essentially given the world-at-large permission to do whatever they want with the beta code, and the GPL license is not revocable once given.
I'm saying this because in the Netherlands there are cases where a programmer worked on project A, left the company, company sold project A to another company which made a huge profit. Because the programmer didn't sign a copyright traversal agreement with his original company, he still was the owner. He went to court and asked for a lot of money or the termination of the project A. The judge agreed that he still was the owner and had every right on the money earned by the second company.
That's an entirely different argument. In these cases, the company is technicially distributing code without ownership or permission, an outright violation of copyright law. Had the programmer given the company permission to sublicense, distribute, and sell the code [all of which are not granted by normal copyright law but are by ther GPL], there would have been no case.
No, you cannot. If my fridge were connected to the Internet via NAT, I would not be able to get to it from the outside. A demonstration for you and everyone else who thinks that NAT is a cure-all:
My house's IP is 185.12.16.192 [not my real IP. Don't try it. I don't know who's it is, if anyone's]. That IP is directly connected to a Linux NAT box [or Linksys router, if you prefer.] By definition of NAT, it takes outgoing requests from local bits [192.168.x.x], munges with the TCP/IP headers, and routes them to the outside world. It then keeps watch for reply contacts and does the reverse header-munging.
My fridge is connected to my local network. From its point of view, its only IP is 192.168.1.17.
Now, I'm at the supermarket and want to check how much milk I have left. I can get to the house no problem [see above IP], but there's no way I can get to the fridge. I cannot simply direct a request to the fridge because there is no way for me to reach the fridge -- it has no address from my point of view. The NAT box won't help, either, because my connection is not in reply to a fridge outgoing request, so the NAT box doesn't know to do its header munging/routing. It is possible to get around this through port forwarding or a seperate protocol, but the former is an ugly hack and the latter is an ugly hack that requires a special forwarding deamon to be running on the NAT box.
With IPv6, the only bits of the system that still remain are the local router, the fridge, and the supermarket. This time around, the fridge has an outside-addressable IP. The local router doesn't need to do any header-munging, and in fact is transparent to the entire process.
Implementations of NAT to hide extensive local networks function to approximately the same degree as trying to place a phone call to the Andromeda galaxy -- you don't exactly know where your recipiant is, so you can't get the message to it.
Incorrect.
A monopoly is not about making people pay arbitrary prices, as people will simply not pay for [and forego] the product if it is too expensive, especially for non-vital items like PC's. A monopoly about one company owning such a large market share that they are capable of setting the market price for an item. It is a subtle, but vital difference.
If Microsoft suddenly started charging everyone $5,000 for an OS license, the price of a PC that the Average User gets from Dell [at least and especially in the short term] would increase approximately $5,000. Likewise, if OPEC [a definite monopoly] started charging $100/barrel, the price of oil on the open market would increase approximately $100/barrel. The overall demand for oil/PC's would shrink to the point that can be sustained at that price, but the price is still fixed.
Now, let's contrast that with a currently competitive market -- corn [ignoring government subsidies for the moment -- we're not decreasing the price]. If nameless corporate farming chain A started charging $100/bushel for corn, people would laugh at them and not buy corn from them. The market price for corn would increase marginially because the supply is not there, but it would not increase to anywhere near $100.
Second, monopoly status is about being able to create unreasonably high entry costs to competition, and therefore, stifle it before ever taking hold. Ask youself, are there more choices today for opeating systems for the x86 platform then there was in 1990? If you answered yes, then you are correct. Linux successfull has developed into a robust desktop operating system. That would be impossible if MS had the ability to raise entry costs. The mere existenance of Linux proves beyond any reasonable doubt that MS isn't a monopoly.
You seem to be under the assumption that barriers to entry must always be monetary. This does not have to be the case.
Because Microsoft owns the single largest market suite and the single largest web browser, and they only support them on Windows and non-competing markets [Mac, Solaris for IE], any competing x86 operating system is going to have to create one of each. To create a market-viable operating system, the programming team needs to create applications not related to the OS itself -- aka barrier to entry. Linux, you would argue, is already there -- I'm not quite sure if I agree withh you, but let's say they are and move on to the next point.
Microsoft's most valid, if dubiously supported, argument against the widespread adoption of Linux, especially in the high-$$$ corporate environments, is the cost of retraining. Secretaries would have to be retrained, to some degree, to work with FooOffice and Bar Desktop on top of Linux. Likewise, you'd probably need a new sysadmin, although that's a minor, minor part of the total cost. Microsoft, along with the MBA's of the world, call this Total Cost of Ownership. In reality, it's a barrier to entry in the marketplace. Microsoft's monopoly has created One Way to Do Things, and any marginally different way is going to cost lots of dollars.
Now, let's look at that in another semi-competitive consumer/buisness market: cars. People use cars everyday. Most people don't particularly care about what type of car they are using. Most people can switch from one type of car to another without a major hassle. Different models of cars are definitely different machines, but one company has not become so dominant that everybody learns the Ford Way of Doing Things, becoming incapable of doing anything different.
This doesn't exactly look like it's Microsoft's fault, but I reference the first paragraph in this section -- Microsoft owns the office suite and web browser, and will not port them to alternative operating systems. If a third-party company had the most popular office suite, say Corel, the odds are much greater that you'd see a version for any and every operating system that looks like it stands a chance of gaining marketshare. The main consumer reason for not upgrading is the Catch-22 of not enough programs, but it's Microsoft, through leverage of the Office near-monopoly especially, that starts the cycle in the first place.
Here is the central question: Today, in the year 2001, can you or can you not choose your desktop operating system, with regards to the x86 platform?
No.
Don't get me wrong, there are obviously other operating systems out there, but calling them competition is a real stretch. Of the four major OEM's, at least three of them [I haven't exactly kept track] do not offer non-windows OS's preinstalled. I cannot walk into a Gateway store and return with a Linux box. I doubt that most of the people who work at said store would even know what FreeBSD is, let alone laugh at me when I request a box with it installed.
The OEM is also the only way an Average User is going to get an operating system installed on his machine. In an era when boardroom wars go on about which bloody icons are going to show up on the default desktop, expecting the Average User to find, buy, and install his OS of choice is a real stretch, even if that OS is Windows.
Simply put, if Dell won't sell it, it doesn't exist in the minds of the Average User. Linux may, may be _beginning_ to enter the realm of competition, as a couple OEM's are sometimes selling boxes with it installed -- this from an OS that is as old as Windows and inarguably more stable and efficent at the kernel level [1]. The remainder of those sixty OSes simply don't exist, for all intents and purposes.
[1] - I don't care whether a driver caused it or not, I should not be getting segfaults in kernel32.dll, no matter whether it's 9x or NT.
That'd be the BSA, which causes IBM's entry into the conflagaration with a suprise audit at Perl Harbor.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIIIV IIVIIIIIIVIII...
I don't think that the Romans had a concept of decimals, as they didn't have a concept of zero.
No, the stupidest thing ever done in the history of marketing was leaving the car model name "Nova" unchanged for a Mexican release -- "Nova" == "No go" in Spanish.
Releasing a dubiously better console through a bundle package that doubles the initial price does seem to come close, though.
On a slight tangent, has Microsoft even released the final specs yet? Their website doesn't have it, whereas the Gamecube and PS2 both have a full spec list up.
With a punch-card system, if the names are all lined up on one side, they have to be really tiny [single-lines]. Then you get flack from people who couldn't read the ballot. A butterfly ballot allows candidate names to be double-height.
drizzling shit came up with those 50 000 different voting systems, anyway? Doesn't anyone take that shit seriously enough to think that maybe, just maybe, voting systems should be consistent?
Um... the counties? The Federal elections weren't the only ones going on on Nov. 7'th, you know -- state and local candidates were running, also. A county with 200 candidates for a given position may feasibly need a different ballot design than one with 2.
Incorrect. You are neglecting, sir, the force of gravity vs. the centripedal force required.
By your definition, I'm would be in a geosynchronous orbit if I were standing on the equator, although I am obviously not orbiting.
The centripedal force required to maintain a circular path increases proportionally to the radius from the center of the circle (r*omega squard). The force of gravity that provides this centripedal force, however, decreases with the square of the radius from the center of the earth/orbit/circle. As it turns out, the only place where those two forces match is at the altitude required for geosynchronous orbit. An object below the geosynchronous altitude with the required angular velocity will fall to the earth (see: yourself), and one above it will form an elliptical orbit or fly off into space. [I really don't feel like doing the calculations now]
You can have a geosynchronously moving bit at any altitude or line of latitude but both require powered station-keeping -- I could be in a geosynchronous 'orbit' right now if I could generate 9.8 m/s^2 accelearation under my chair.
For all intentes and purposes, howerver, satellites require unpowered station-keeping, resulting in a fixed geosynchronous altitude.
2.4.0?
As a resident of Florida, let me clarify this. Military absentee ballots sent from overseas or on-board ships were supposed to arrive by a given date with an overseas postmark. Unfortunately, ballots sent from on-board ships either didn't receive a postmark or didn't receive a foreign postmark, and hence were rejected due to an oversight in the law.
The majority of the rejected ballots were eventually added into the total. There was no 'military veto' over the presidential election, and the Gore-platform quotes in WSWS were taken out of context to imply that Gore was scared of the military; in reality (as opposed to delusion-land of WSWS), Gore didn't want the military's morale to slip at the implied "I don't care about you or your votes." Not a good thing when some data had shown that military readiness and effectiveness was already slipping.
So far as I understand it, it doesn't really matter who owns the cells. Since they're self-reproducing, the second any company or university sells a single live cell the supply of that line is irrevocably and permanently unrestricted, as the people too whom they sold the cell can now grow and cell more.
Kinda like open source/Free Software, in a way -- once it's out there, there's no putting the cat back in the bag.
Actually, the specific examples aren't bad use of the technology. Review copies and galleys are both rather special cases, and at least in the case of the review copies they're often not the book + final cover anyway. Do notice, however, that there's no inherent advantage to the 'timed' bit of the pdf, and also the veep made no real mention of distributing mass quanatities of e-books.
You should have just stressed the (il)legal aspect of what they were doing. Arguments based upon a moral/honor code are only valid to people who share the same perception of morality, yet the law is (in most cases) farily clear.
I happen to aggree with the parent post here. All of the truly brilliant 15-year-olds, like Katz's review and promotion of a sensationalized book mentions, are not widely known online aas 15-year olds: act with maturity and the default assumption is that you are an adult.
From whom are you buying your DSL, and where can I get some? Full T1 speeds are 1.5MBPS, and that's where most comsumer DSL tops out -- buisnesses can sometimes pay \$$Largenum for Multi-Mb/S RADSL lines, but you're still not going to get 20Mbps for under $300/mo or so.
Also, most of that cheap DSL shares your voice line -- any dedicated line is going to cost you for the second/third/tenth line.
Hell no. Having a family member that worked in broadcasting for 20 years, I can tell you that the reason that no one's producing HDTV equipment is cost.
You think that the _consumer_ gear costs an arm and a leg? Just try upgrading the cameras, monitors, editing equipment, and mastering equipment. For each studio.
On the station side, you're going to need a new control room, bloody TRANSMITTER [horribly expensive pieces of equipment], and sometimes a tower to boot, addition to ugrading the news studios and remote trucks (mirowave and satellite links).
And all that for crappy programming that three people in the entire country own the equipment to see in the native resolution.
This was filed in 1998. Do any ASP's go bakk before then?
Take a look at the last clause -- does it look like every buffer-overflow ever created is covered? :)
Actually, take a look at it -- ANY of the IE "user goes to a site and gets r00ted" buffer overflows would be prior art on this claim. HTML/the web server would serve as computer code entered by a web browser (the URL). A redirector (or the page itself) would contain the buffer overflow -- computer code which initiates the download/overflow, which is thereby executed. Should that do anything to the computer, it's 'maintinance.'
Also, take a gander at claims 1 and 14 -- it looks like buffer overflows would apply to those.
In short, McAfee's claiming a patent on any download by a web browser that is automaticially executed without any further user input that the initiation of the download -- they extend that to cover specific types of those downloads & the server-side code, but that's what the most general claims are.
As much as I like the idea of Microsoft paying through the nose, I would really it rather not happen because of Code Red. Why? Because Microsoft really isn't to blame here.
The security flaw was exposed to the public (not kept secret), and a patch was released & made available a full month before the main CR outbreak. They did everything they reasonably should have.
Actually, I woldn't particularly mind it if every AOL/MSN/Etc. subscriber decided that the Internet was too dangerous and unplugged their computer. More bandwidth for me. :)
Man, I'm glad that I'm not using Minesweeper. This new virus exploits an unexploded mine in Minesweeper, and it does use Outlook and the stupidity of users. Luckily, I'm running OpenMine, so I'm not at risk. In fact, OpenMine has protected me from 2^37-302 virii. And just look at the millions of dollars that I've saved using OpenMine. I hope that this OpenMine takes off, along with OS/2. Unfortunately, my doghouse has to pay for the stupidity of Microsoft: this virus sucked 212 nibbles of bandwidth!
Did anyone here read the Technical Overview! They must have really been excited about the P4's architecture. It seems like every other sentance ends in an exclamation point!
"This means that the higher levels don't have to experience a cache miss before moving to the data in the second array, while the 32-byte-line design would! This has the benefit of greatly decreasing average memory access latencies for contiguously used data!"
I have honestly never seen anyone more excited about CPU Caches.
Thank you Harry Browne. (Sorry, had to get that in. I'm of a largely libertarian political philosophy also.)
They can't? If they priced WinXP at $1,000/CPU and discontinued all new licensing for all other Microsoft Operating Systems (95-2K), what choice would the Compaq's and Dell's have?
Sure, they'd very quickly start selling systems with some variant of Linux (the only other x86 operating system big enough to get mentioned on CNBC), but here at Slashdot we know as well as anyone else that Linux is by no means ready for the Average User.)
Some consumers would balk at the LinPC's, some would accept the lack of familiarity (and from their perspective ease-of-use), and some would buckle down and learn to use Linux/X, but PC sales as a whole would drop for quite some time. My completely unsupported speculation is that PC sales would fall to a trickle for at least four months (my guess as to how long it would take the combined talent of the entire Linux community, Dell/Compaq, IBM, and several major corporations to collectively produce a workable Desktop Linux + Application Suite), where they would rebound.
For all intents and purposes, Microsoft can set whatever price they want in the absence of regulatory oversight. By setting an obscene price, however, they will kill the market entirely -- the consequence of monopolistic prices. People cannot simply turn to an alternative operating system for the moment -- the choice is Windows or No PC.
If you remember your economics, the natural state in a completely competitive economy is that prices fall to the point where suppliers cover little more than costs: without value added, margins are thin [See: printing industries, dot-where'd-That-Stock-Go?]; one firm raising prices just results in consumers switching to a different supplier [at presumably lower prices]. In a monopolistic situation, prices fall only to the point where the profits of the producing company is maximized. In the case of high-necessity items like food, that prics can be arbitrarially high; the PC is still, for the user, a luxury item and can be 'done without'.
Error: 'long long long' is too long for GCC
Is there any nice, easy way around this that will let me not rewrite division?
My solution of choice would be an encrypted file system combined with a remote 'format' key in the server room -- sure, it won't get finished on each & every desktop, but it (or something like that) could very well write enough random data to really mess up the software inventories.
Another question -- how does the software inventory work exactly? What does it check for?
No.
Um... the GPL in no way requires a mod developer to release his changes to the public. If you read the GPL, it only requires that the source be released (freely) to people who have the binary -- the binary distribution can be restricted however you want from yourself.
With mainstream items, like the Kernel, that are used publicly, original recipients are quite likely to pass it on to more people (and more, etc.), essentially making the modification public. For more obscure bits, like a phone-switching system another poster mentioned, people who get the code have little to no incentive or desire to release it to other people who would have no use for it.
To reiterate, a modification not being available to the world at large is not in and of itself a violation of the GPL.