Didn't Macs already have sufficient virtualization options available even before the switch to x86? Mac users have been emulating Win/DOS for a long time as have pretty much all of the alternative operating systems.
The fact that hardware has gotten a lot faster while OS requirements have remained relatively stagnant is why virtualization is much more viable these days. With 6 cores and 8G of RAM, you can virtualize quite a lot and that kind of PC hardware is pretty cheap.
Depending on the Mac you have, you could end up with any one of the 3 major GPU vendors. Although the fact that you are buying a machine with an OEM OS install is probably the key thing here. If you don't bother to install your own OS, you kind of avoid that problem.
As far as after market things go, the Mac is in the same boat as Linux. It may work or it may not be supported at all and you have to be careful what you buy.
A simple file has all of the advantages of streaming media and none of the downsides. When it also represents the cheaper option, it really makes no sense to shun physical media.
> Apple would love to sell movies and apps from the iTunes store without DRM.
You've just got to love how the fanboys will speak for a corporation as if they have any standing to do so. It's pretty arrogant really. It also flies in the fact of the fact that they clearly benefit from the arrangement.
They could also allow for 3rd party DRM implementations if they were willing.
DRM on apps prevents me from using my device as if I owned it. I can't install products of my choosing or use formats of my choosing. I am not free to backup and restore my device free of some other proprietary entanglement.
It's the same problem as video.
The user is stuck in an Apple-only quagmire where their devices and content only work with other Apple-only devices in a manner that Apple approves of.
I can play a Harry Potter disk in any brand of player. Can't say the same of the "digital download" that came with it.
Anyone that's been to University and taken a class that covers this sort of thing should already "know something". They tend to talk about more than just the industry flavor of the month.
That's the great thing about a more theoretical CS program.
A lot of stuff in tech is not nearly as new as most people (even in the field) think it is.
"patent monopoly" actually shows very clear understanding of what's going on here. The lack of understanding represented by your viewpoint is why patents are such a mess.
The "17 year monopoly" aspect of the situation is completely glossed over, ignored, and otherwise trivialized.
Monopoly is the right word to use because it frames a patent in it's correct context relative to the broader costs of allowing it.
So management finally discovered SMP and threading about 20 years or so after it was introduced onto the types of systems all of these outfits have been using since the beginning of time?
Sedate this fellow before he starts to perpetrate some more "management".
> Be that as it may, things appear to work fine on Windows. On Linux they don't.
The reverse is also true.
The fact that Microsoft is an industry strangling monopoly on the PC platform really doesn't alter this. Anyone that claims otherwise is an idiot or a liar.
Broke due to actively monopoly sabotage is a bit different than merely broken. This aspect of the situation should be front and center whenever it's the case. It should not be quietly swept under the rug.
No. I thought this was about performance and how the relational model can't handle every problem well.
Sometimes you need something that's not an RDBMS. Perhaps you really need to use something that predates the RDBMS but is now just being rediscovered again.
If you've already got something developed in Flash, why would you waste time developing a mobile version regardless of the technology. That's the real problem. The choice of technology is no so much the big barrier.
The desktop version isn't going to work well on a mobile device regardless.
Supported by Linux? Does it even work well enough in Windows that those guys would be interested in using it. Otherwise, really robust Linux support is kind of a moot point. If it can't deliver, then it doesn't matter really.
Unfortunately Best Buy kind of sucks for this sort of machine. Even when they did have the Revos, they tended to hide them so people didn't discover that you could compute with a $200 device rather than a $500 one or $1000 one.
Alternatively, the use you can attribute to piracy is the theoretical maximum demand that you can possibly have from the product. HOWEVER, since entertainment has a highly elastic demand you can't relate the level of usage represented by piracy to any product offered at any price.
Free can't be compared to non-free. It's the "infinite" part of the pricing and elastic demand. Charge the user just an extra quarter or penny and the situation is completely different mathematically.
You really can't compare infinity to anything else.
Media moguls are seeing the "demand" and getting big heads thinking that theres X*$20 of market out there when it really isn't so.
Pirates might make good Netflix customers where the percieved marginal cost of a work is also zero.
The US postal service still remains the largest and most effective channel for the dissemination of digital video. While transferring a SINGLE work may be slow and tedious, one is not merely limited to a single work. Works can be replicated by the hundreds and what ever speed the process needs. Much like distributed methods in the ether (like BitTorrent), stuff can still quickly replicate.
They were doing this 200 years ago. Never mind now.
The proces doesn't have to be "conventional" or "instantaneous".
People in power have been underestimating sneakernet for a very long time.
No. Battery life goes from 8hrs to 5hrs because Linux is actually "following the spec".
Hacks and reverse engineering should not be necessary.
The fact that this kind of nonsense still goes on in 2011 is not a black eye for Linux really. Although that's certainly what Microsoft intends. The clueless will certainly oblige them.
> Ever occur to you that most of us wouldn't actually want to switch?
No. I figure most Lemmings could have their boxes replaced with something else and if you told them it was the newest version of Windows they would believe you.
> but what keeps me with Windows is the fact that, in my > mind, nearly every important system variable can be > accessed via a GUI element that's usually in an > obviouis/sane place
That's a reason to defect to MacOS, not stick with Windows.
> --Nero 11 Mutimedia Suite. Yes, Nero has a Linux version, > and there's K3B and similar burning solutions, but if you > haven't seen the suite and EVERYTHNG it does, and tried > to find me an equivalent list of tools, it'd be a hodgepodge > at best.
Your lack of actual requirements is duly noted.
Nero in particular has always been one of my favorite arguments NOT to run Windows.
It also means that you can lock down the image so that it is much less of a security or maintenace threat than an actual PC running Windows. It might even run better.
If you really want to torture yourself with Windows 7 then you can just get yourself a cheap low profile machine to play around with and not subject yourself to it full time.
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Didn't Macs already have sufficient virtualization options available even before the switch to x86? Mac users have been emulating Win/DOS for a long time as have pretty much all of the alternative operating systems.
The fact that hardware has gotten a lot faster while OS requirements have remained relatively stagnant is why virtualization is much more viable these days. With 6 cores and 8G of RAM, you can virtualize quite a lot and that kind of PC hardware is pretty cheap.
No not really.
Depending on the Mac you have, you could end up with any one of the 3 major GPU vendors. Although the fact that you are buying a machine with an OEM OS install is probably the key thing here. If you don't bother to install your own OS, you kind of avoid that problem.
As far as after market things go, the Mac is in the same boat as Linux. It may work or it may not be supported at all and you have to be careful what you buy.
A simple file has all of the advantages of streaming media and none of the downsides. When it also represents the cheaper option, it really makes no sense to shun physical media.
> Apple would love to sell movies and apps from the iTunes store without DRM.
You've just got to love how the fanboys will speak for a corporation as if they have any standing to do so. It's pretty arrogant really. It also flies in the fact of the fact that they clearly benefit from the arrangement.
They could also allow for 3rd party DRM implementations if they were willing.
DRM on apps prevents me from using my device as if I owned it. I can't install products of my choosing or use formats of my choosing. I am not free to backup and restore my device free of some other proprietary entanglement.
It's the same problem as video.
The user is stuck in an Apple-only quagmire where their devices and content only work with other Apple-only devices in a manner that Apple approves of.
I can play a Harry Potter disk in any brand of player. Can't say the same of the "digital download" that came with it.
Anyone that's been to University and taken a class that covers this sort of thing should already "know something". They tend to talk about more than just the industry flavor of the month.
That's the great thing about a more theoretical CS program.
A lot of stuff in tech is not nearly as new as most people (even in the field) think it is.
"patent monopoly" actually shows very clear understanding of what's going on here. The lack of understanding represented by your viewpoint is why patents are such a mess.
The "17 year monopoly" aspect of the situation is completely glossed over, ignored, and otherwise trivialized.
Monopoly is the right word to use because it frames a patent in it's correct context relative to the broader costs of allowing it.
So management finally discovered SMP and threading about 20 years or so after it was introduced onto the types of systems all of these outfits have been using since the beginning of time?
Sedate this fellow before he starts to perpetrate some more "management".
> Be that as it may, things appear to work fine on Windows. On Linux they don't.
The reverse is also true.
The fact that Microsoft is an industry strangling monopoly on the PC platform really doesn't alter this. Anyone that claims otherwise is an idiot or a liar.
Broke due to actively monopoly sabotage is a bit different than merely broken. This aspect of the situation should be front and center whenever it's the case. It should not be quietly swept under the rug.
My local Frys never has the cheap boxes in stock. Never fails. Doesn't matter if it's a low profile machine or not.
Now the problem with Via is that it's Via.
Lack of driver support or community operation in Linux is rather moot.
No. I thought this was about performance and how the relational model can't handle every problem well.
Sometimes you need something that's not an RDBMS. Perhaps you really need to use something that predates the RDBMS but is now just being rediscovered again.
That's less like Enterprise and more like Galileo.
You've got it backwards.
If you've already got something developed in Flash, why would you waste time developing a mobile version regardless of the technology. That's the real problem. The choice of technology is no so much the big barrier.
The desktop version isn't going to work well on a mobile device regardless.
> Why do you need a TV card? The world is going streaming my friend.
Cable monopoly bandwidth caps.
Don't have to worry about that sort of thing with more Jurasic types of video delivery.
Supported by Linux? Does it even work well enough in Windows that those guys would be interested in using it. Otherwise, really robust Linux support is kind of a moot point. If it can't deliver, then it doesn't matter really.
Unfortunately Best Buy kind of sucks for this sort of machine. Even when they did have the Revos, they tended to hide them so people didn't discover that you could compute with a $200 device rather than a $500 one or $1000 one.
Alternatively, the use you can attribute to piracy is the theoretical maximum demand that you can possibly have from the product. HOWEVER, since entertainment has a highly elastic demand you can't relate the level of usage represented by piracy to any product offered at any price.
Free can't be compared to non-free. It's the "infinite" part of the pricing and elastic demand. Charge the user just an extra quarter or penny and the situation is completely different mathematically.
You really can't compare infinity to anything else.
Media moguls are seeing the "demand" and getting big heads thinking that theres X*$20 of market out there when it really isn't so.
Pirates might make good Netflix customers where the percieved marginal cost of a work is also zero.
The US postal service still remains the largest and most effective channel for the dissemination of digital video. While transferring a SINGLE work may be slow and tedious, one is not merely limited to a single work. Works can be replicated by the hundreds and what ever speed the process needs. Much like distributed methods in the ether (like BitTorrent), stuff can still quickly replicate.
They were doing this 200 years ago. Never mind now.
The proces doesn't have to be "conventional" or "instantaneous".
People in power have been underestimating sneakernet for a very long time.
No. Battery life goes from 8hrs to 5hrs because Linux is actually "following the spec".
Hacks and reverse engineering should not be necessary.
The fact that this kind of nonsense still goes on in 2011 is not a black eye for Linux really. Although that's certainly what Microsoft intends. The clueless will certainly oblige them.
> Ever occur to you that most of us wouldn't actually want to switch?
No. I figure most Lemmings could have their boxes replaced with something else and if you told them it was the newest version of Windows they would believe you.
> but what keeps me with Windows is the fact that, in my
> mind, nearly every important system variable can be
> accessed via a GUI element that's usually in an
> obviouis/sane place
That's a reason to defect to MacOS, not stick with Windows.
> --Nero 11 Mutimedia Suite. Yes, Nero has a Linux version,
> and there's K3B and similar burning solutions, but if you
> haven't seen the suite and EVERYTHNG it does, and tried
> to find me an equivalent list of tools, it'd be a hodgepodge
> at best.
Your lack of actual requirements is duly noted.
Nero in particular has always been one of my favorite arguments NOT to run Windows.
...and doing it as little as possible.
That makes a difference.
It also means that you can lock down the image so that it is much less of a security or maintenace threat than an actual PC running Windows. It might even run better.
> Who is responsible for getting security & stability updates out in the Linux world?
Who cares? Unix is not an OS that requires babysitting.
If you really want to torture yourself with Windows 7 then you can just get yourself a cheap low profile machine to play around with and not subject yourself to it full time.
Or you could just run it in a VM.