I realize I'm posting too late to be moderated, much less positively, but oh well.
Let's consider what a MS distro of Linux would actually mean. First of all, you can quit worrying about them hijacking the source and making it closed. The GPL prevents that for a reason. If you have a lack of faith in the ability of the GPL to protect against this, that's a topic for another time.
If Microsoft ever tried to make a Linux distro, it would have to be good. Don't forget that in order to kill Netscape, Internet Explorer had to be that good. And, for the most part, it still is, although it seems to be on the decline. A crack quality Linux distro - how exactly would that be a bad thing? A world running an open-source OS - how would that be a bad thing?
Secondly, an embrace of Linux would essentially mean a retreat from the Windows OS and a focus on applications. I see this as an improvement on what we have now. MS can't program anticompetitive "enhancements" into Linux itself without a serious GPL violation. And by this time, MS applications will likely have to face open-source equivalents. All of this means that if MS is creating a distro in our hypothetical future, they're actually innovating. I also use this to counter the argument that MS will use the kernel but write a proprietary window manager/desktop environment. For Linux to be successful to the point where MS feels threatened, we have to have some seriously good desktops. (insert call for the KDE folks and the GNOME folks to start cooperation)
Gates is too smart to let his company die from competition. But it can be changed. And isn't that the point?
Google has ads now. They aren't banners, just light little hypertext links at the top of the search site. Try searching for MP3 on Google - the firstlook.com link at the top (but below the google logo) in the blue box is a bought and paid for ad.
I've actually found some interesting sites because they advertised on google. These are the ads that google will sell more of - not banners.
I think we're right to ask why we can't get simple x-terminals (or equivelents) to buy. But I'm going to stop thinking from my angle and start thinking from the angle of the service providers.
Ultimately, what they're selling is a content delivery service. They give you the "node" at the end of the line and they hope to sell you stuff to go on it. This holds true for all Internet appliances with the "sell the blades" model, whether it's a simple surfing device or a TiVO. They want to sell you content, and in order to reach a wider audience they give you the node to sweeten the deal.
This raises a fundamental question. Will we have to pay to get content delivered to every last device in our home?
I think we all know the answer: none of us would. By definition, then, we don't have to - I don't think any consumers would do that.
So here's how the internet appliance companies are going to adapt their content delivery service once A) broadband becomes more common and B) they get their software and hardware established:
The appliance companies are going to give away servers. After a time, when Joe-consumer begins to want more than two or three ways to access the internet, he'll begin to balk at paying for all this. And the appliance companies will build server appliances: instead of delivering content to the individual devices that we use, they'll deliver it to servers owned by consumers (and given away/sold very cheaply by the service providers). Once the content is on the server (thinking especially music and video here) then we can plug in as many devices as we own via ethernet.
Intel's been helping with Mozilla for a long while now. For instance, look at all the bugs that have been assigned on Bugzilla to people with @intel.com addresses. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Intel also had people working on other open source projects.
They have to be working with the source with this type of box, or as some people have pointed out, the living room box just wouldn't be stable enough. Perhaps we should stop thinking of Intel as a hardware company...their marketing mantra of "building blocks of the internet" includes software too.
It's not an advantage of warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded that would have enabled the mammals to survive such an extinction event. It's size. The dinosaurs would have required massive amounts of resources to survive. An asteroid collision would have decimated the food chain, and the bulky, wieldy dinosaurs would have had trouble competing for the small scraps with the smaller mammals. Yes, there were small dinos but not the size of a mouse. And a squirrel is about as big as mammals would have been. No monkeys or deer.:)
I know it's a bit too late to actually get read/moderated, but I felt I should share this anyway.
The ATVEF spec for enhanced TV already uses this model. Companies who "adopt" the spec get a free license to the patents from Intel and others who spearheaded it. License agreement here.
AOL can never take over the internet; it can never control the media even after buying Time-Warner.
While this is probably one of the biggest mergers in history, and certainly the biggest media merger, it's important to keep in mind that the internet is also the biggest communications medium in history. Even with the merger, they "own" the same proportion of the internet that other companies (say, ABC or NBC) owned in other communications mediums, like radio or television. Actually, they own less.
As long as there are people like us on/. who are committed to providing and/or promoting:
a) open source, free speech internet standards like Linux and Mozilla,
b) many ISPs and many sources of bandwidth (DSL, Cable, Wireless/Satelite), and
c) a variety of hardware architectures,
the internet will never become owned by one company. No matter how much AOL and Microsoft wish over a magic 8 ball.
Requiring labeling is stupid. Bear in mind that the average consumer would not realize what label x meant, but would only assume that being "x free" is a good thing. Acme Lard could claim to be "Vitamin Free", and with marketing, this could be perceived as a good thing. (!) Thus, labeling only leads to more consumer confusion.
While Monsanto's "seeds of destruction" are abhorrent (I've heard of it before this story), I firmly believe that market forces will force schemes like this to fail. As previously pointed out, many farmers depend on a recycling of seeds. Because of this, they will not and cannot buy Monsanto's kamikaze seeds-and so the scheme will fail.
Biotech is a new market. Give capitalism a chance to work before calling for new regulation. Ultimately market "evolution" will weed out the crappy ideas: both crappy morally and crappy economically.
Seriously, when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution and subsequently the bill of rights, they recognized several factors which could destroy the new nation. One of them was a strong executive branch (i.e. the democracy turns to monarchy). Another was political parties.
The two party system is, as many of us have observed and as even the founders observed, a great danger to our nation.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize I'm posting too late to be moderated, much less positively, but oh well.
Let's consider what a MS distro of Linux would actually mean. First of all, you can quit worrying about them hijacking the source and making it closed. The GPL prevents that for a reason. If you have a lack of faith in the ability of the GPL to protect against this, that's a topic for another time.
If Microsoft ever tried to make a Linux distro, it would have to be good. Don't forget that in order to kill Netscape, Internet Explorer had to be that good. And, for the most part, it still is, although it seems to be on the decline. A crack quality Linux distro - how exactly would that be a bad thing? A world running an open-source OS - how would that be a bad thing?
Secondly, an embrace of Linux would essentially mean a retreat from the Windows OS and a focus on applications. I see this as an improvement on what we have now. MS can't program anticompetitive "enhancements" into Linux itself without a serious GPL violation. And by this time, MS applications will likely have to face open-source equivalents. All of this means that if MS is creating a distro in our hypothetical future, they're actually innovating. I also use this to counter the argument that MS will use the kernel but write a proprietary window manager/desktop environment. For Linux to be successful to the point where MS feels threatened, we have to have some seriously good desktops. (insert call for the KDE folks and the GNOME folks to start cooperation)
Gates is too smart to let his company die from competition. But it can be changed. And isn't that the point?
-Merlyn42
Google has ads now. They aren't banners, just light little hypertext links at the top of the search site. Try searching for MP3 on Google - the firstlook.com link at the top (but below the google logo) in the blue box is a bought and paid for ad.
I've actually found some interesting sites because they advertised on google. These are the ads that google will sell more of - not banners.
-Merlyn42
I think we're right to ask why we can't get simple x-terminals (or equivelents) to buy. But I'm going to stop thinking from my angle and start thinking from the angle of the service providers.
Ultimately, what they're selling is a content delivery service. They give you the "node" at the end of the line and they hope to sell you stuff to go on it. This holds true for all Internet appliances with the "sell the blades" model, whether it's a simple surfing device or a TiVO. They want to sell you content, and in order to reach a wider audience they give you the node to sweeten the deal.
This raises a fundamental question. Will we have to pay to get content delivered to every last device in our home?
I think we all know the answer: none of us would. By definition, then, we don't have to - I don't think any consumers would do that.
So here's how the internet appliance companies are going to adapt their content delivery service once A) broadband becomes more common and B) they get their software and hardware established:
The appliance companies are going to give away servers. After a time, when Joe-consumer begins to want more than two or three ways to access the internet, he'll begin to balk at paying for all this. And the appliance companies will build server appliances: instead of delivering content to the individual devices that we use, they'll deliver it to servers owned by consumers (and given away/sold very cheaply by the service providers). Once the content is on the server (thinking especially music and video here) then we can plug in as many devices as we own via ethernet.
-Merlyn42
Intel's been helping with Mozilla for a long while now. For instance, look at all the bugs that have been assigned on Bugzilla to people with @intel.com addresses. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Intel also had people working on other open source projects.
They have to be working with the source with this type of box, or as some people have pointed out, the living room box just wouldn't be stable enough. Perhaps we should stop thinking of Intel as a hardware company...their marketing mantra of "building blocks of the internet" includes software too.
-Merlyn42
It's not an advantage of warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded that would have enabled the mammals to survive such an extinction event. It's size. The dinosaurs would have required massive amounts of resources to survive. An asteroid collision would have decimated the food chain, and the bulky, wieldy dinosaurs would have had trouble competing for the small scraps with the smaller mammals. Yes, there were small dinos but not the size of a mouse. And a squirrel is about as big as mammals would have been. No monkeys or deer. :)
-Merlyn42
The ATVEF spec for enhanced TV already uses this model. Companies who "adopt" the spec get a free license to the patents from Intel and others who spearheaded it. License agreement here.
-Merlyn42
AOL can never take over the internet; it can never control the media even after buying Time-Warner.
While this is probably one of the biggest mergers in history, and certainly the biggest media merger, it's important to keep in mind that the internet is also the biggest communications medium in history. Even with the merger, they "own" the same proportion of the internet that other companies (say, ABC or NBC) owned in other communications mediums, like radio or television. Actually, they own less.
As long as there are people like us on /. who are committed to providing and/or promoting:
a) open source, free speech internet standards like Linux and Mozilla,
b) many ISPs and many sources of bandwidth (DSL, Cable, Wireless/Satelite), and
c) a variety of hardware architectures,
the internet will never become owned by one company. No matter how much AOL and Microsoft wish over a magic 8 ball.
-Merlyn42
Requiring labeling is stupid. Bear in mind that the average consumer would not realize what label x meant, but would only assume that being "x free" is a good thing. Acme Lard could claim to be "Vitamin Free", and with marketing, this could be perceived as a good thing. (!) Thus, labeling only leads to more consumer confusion.
While Monsanto's "seeds of destruction"
are abhorrent (I've heard of it before this story), I firmly believe that market forces will force schemes like this to fail. As previously pointed out, many farmers depend on a recycling of seeds. Because of this, they will not and cannot buy Monsanto's kamikaze seeds-and so the scheme will fail.
Biotech is a new market. Give capitalism a chance to work before calling for new regulation. Ultimately market "evolution" will weed out the crappy ideas: both crappy morally and crappy economically.
-Merlyn42
...it sucks!
Seriously, when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution and subsequently the bill of rights, they recognized several factors which could destroy the new nation. One of them was a strong executive branch (i.e. the democracy turns to monarchy). Another was political parties.
The two party system is, as many of us have observed and as even the founders observed, a great danger to our nation.
-Merlyn42