Thanks for the clarification. I think I was getting in a twist because Merced was supposed to replace the > 8400 line - so made a assumption whilst I typed without checking (the/. curse:-)
I think I have to disagree : I would say "disappointment" rather than "downfall".
My original though is already posted here but to recap, I think what is occuring is a trade between Moore's law dependant compute growth and a recalcitrant Software developer's world which will never just recompile (even for a price) but wants to upgrade you, with all the problems that entails.
Throwing hardware at the problem, or silicon specifically, is hardly new, and it is distasteful to many people as a solution. But also wrt your downfall scenario, yes the PPro was a flop but this was in no small part because it had (very nice) on chip L2 chaches of up to 2MB, which *cost* and priced it out 'till Intel packaged the PII w/ PPro core and off chip, 1/2 core speed, typically smaller (cheaper) L2s.
I guess we'll have to see if Intel can get the developers excited
Well, it's not like Intel (and HP) haven't had about 5 years or so to manage that.
like a lot of these things (PPro RISC cores to run interpreted x86 instructions), the underlying architecture seems to be there just to accelerate in silcon existing app code.
The day Microsoft, or for that matter any other software vendor offers split upgrade paths e.g. NT4.0SP5 for Itanium w/ bug patches apart from tied featuritis and other effective "upgrade" lock - ins, is the day we might actaully see the kind of huge leaps in performance all this new harware keeps promising.
btw anyone know of an app that would actually want to be coded to EPIC?
It is expected to translate 80x86 instructions into VLIW instructions (or directly to decoded instructions) the same way that Intel P6 and AMD K5/K6/K7 CPUs do, but with a larger number of instructions issued using the VLIW design, it should be faster. However, if native IA-64 code is even faster, this may finally produce the incentive to let the 80x86 architecture finally fade away.
scary
better have that 4000 way Itty workstation to run my 16 bit apps
Whoa, I have to take issues with the Itanium / IA64 being caleld "New". This is a descendant of the HP PA RISC development work at Hewlett Packard, onto which Intel latched itself something like 5 years ago. (in a hullabaloo of marketing fizz which IIRC scared the likes of SGI / MIPS into practically giving up.)
When the Itanium is announced as commercially available (apparently a whole bunch or 6,000 or so eval units are out there) it is not going to be new processor tech that cuts it (if at all) but the compilers, which have to break down (probably CISC legacy) code into the parrelisations the Itty will want.
Yes, I'm griping, and yes what I add is not much news to most readers here, but as/. grabs more and more readers from the broad user community (okay that's a blatant guess, but I just figure) there IS room on the small news items to say as much as to be accurate. i.e. "new processor family" sounds fine, but "new architecture" I'm not so sure about.
I always wonder if the news items are actually edited, or just picked from a bunch of incoming. Whatever. (That's also not a bitching comment, but I do wonder . ..)
the following is from Avie Tevanien's deposition in US vs Microsoft:
"100. When Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 3.0, it touted the ability of its browser to use plug-ins develped for Netscape Navigator. After the introduction of Internet Explorer 3.0, Apple was able to introduce a QuikTime plug-in that was fully compatible with both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer 3.0 browsers. (Schaaff Depo., pp. 114-15) However, with the successive releases of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0, Microsoft Windows 98, and Microsoft multimedia software, Apple has seen a steady degradation of QuickTime's capability to play back a variety of QuickTime-compatible media file formats while operating with Microsoft's Internet Explorer running the Windows operating system. (Schaaff Depo., p. 117-17)"
So, looking beneath the top story (of the deposition) concerning Microsoft making plug-ins incompatible with version revisions of IE, at the beginning MS touted compatibility with NS. Microsoft had to come up to speed fast with development on a new product whose acceptance would depend on people being able to use it with an installed base of sites and plug-ins. Microsoft then brought every bit of engineering focus it could to bring a bag of acquired Spyglass code up to the level of a product people actually wanted. Microsoft had to compete with a massive installed base of a product which undoubtedly pleased people.
This effort was certainly driven by many of that company's connected desires but bear in mind this original effort, for IE 3.0 occurred before IE was bundled and other distribution factors unique to Microsoft's position became significant. Even if you are Microsoft, you could not use massive distribution muscle until product is at least parity with what people expect from a product. (and IIRC IE 2.x was not that)
Once Microsoft had a product that worked, it could lever other factors and advantages uniquely available to it. Absolutely key to this was that IE's shipping version worked with the installed base of the market share leader.
To me the most surprising issue with regards Mozilla and Netscape is that they do not realise that to effect a swicth of products form a massive nstalled base, you *have to be compatible*. Excel used to play nice with Lotus 123 files. Word used to do fine with Word Perfect and Ami Pro files. There are vast layers of compatibility modes in most Microsoft product, and emulaion has been a fundamental compnent of Microsoft's success (at many levels of the word, and with obvious drawbacks). (Hmm, I wonder if Linux starts hurting real bad they'll re write the POSIX 1 dlls in Win2k as lxrun.dll:) Given the advantages in development, distribution and culture (in terms of user affinity) available to a real open - source product, is Netscape exploting it's strengths in the right order?
If NS 6.0 or Mozilla can build from scratch the depth of complexity in XUL and many other modules such as MathML and SVG, could Netscape / Mozilla leverage IE features so that they have the actual possibility to be broadly accepted without every web developer retasking their skills? Individuals and companies are actually *crying out* for a cross - platform browser they can deploy without incompatibility issues. I do not for a minute believe that Netscape - AOL - SUN could not master the marketing savvy to make that (as a future reality) a serious coup. This sort of thing - cross platform standardisation - is precisely what made and makes Microsoft sweat. By reinventing the wheel, or at least broadening the goals fo Mozilla far and wide _but_not_inclusive_ of IE compliance, is the the possibility to keep the most dominant software company on its toes simply foregone?
When the Netscape - AOL - SUN alliance was announced, many here on Slashdot, including much of the press, touted AOL's ability to force a massive distribution to AOL subscribers. AOL bought Netscape for $4bln. The Mozilla team, who remain in the most part Netscape employees are ultimately employed by AOL. Of the Alliance, presuming that the old Netscape is no more, only SUN is not dependant on the Windows platform. Did AOL buy Netscape as a hedge, a bargaining chip? How possibly could AOL release NS 6.0 as a component of it's service if the press in this story and others is true? For a long while there appears to have been a inertia with Mozilla. Partly this is because of the scale of the project. But also now - in the O'Reilly piece linked elswhere, it is being reported that significant bugs are being refused form the code tree. A code freeze is all right, but surely not for a major number release? It would help if Netscape or AOL would clarify their strategy regarding this. But that may be moot already, even by the time I post this. What interests me now is if patches to add a IE compatibility layer, for wont of a better description, would be accepted. Of course there's a quick retort to that - "Why do you want to add the biggest bug ever to the tree - even if the code works?". If the alternative might be years of wait, baited breath, for a seachange in platform use or a wholesale re-estimation of web designers' skills simultaneous with a massive realignment of consumer perception as to what constitutes a "working" browser - then I say, at least, put it in.
it seems that COPYRIGHT DESIGNS AND PATENTS ACT 1988 effective in England and Wales might pre-empt Microsoft's EULAs prohibiting kinds of reverse engineering and decompilation
Hope this will be useful to someone.
Section 50B: Decompilation
50B.--(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program expressed in a low level language-
(a) to convert it into a version expressed in a higher level language, or
(b) incidentally in the course of so converting the program, to copy it, (that is, to "decompile" it), provided that the conditions in subsection (2) are met.
(2) The conditions are that-
(a) it is necessary to decompile the program to obtain the information necessary to create an independent program which can be operated with the program decompiled or with another program ("the permitted objective"); and
(b) the information so obtained is not used for any purpose other than the permitted objective.
(3) In particular, the conditions in subsection (2) are not met if the lawful user-
(a) has readily available to him the information necessary to achieve the permitted objective;
(b) does not confine the decompiling to such acts as are necessary to achieve the permitted objective;
(c) supplies the information obtained by the decompiling to any person to whom it is not necessary to supply it in order to achieve the permitted objective; or
(d) uses the information to create a program which is substantially similar in its expression to the program decompiled or to do any act restricted by copyright.
(4) Where an act is permitted under this section, it is irrelevant whether or not there exists any term or condition in an agreement which purports to prohibit or restrict the act (such terms being, by virtue of section 296A, void.
Okay this may already be redundant, but can someone tell how to equate foot candle infomation provided by Color Kinetics into an equivalent for 100 Watt 240 volt 30deg tungsten halogen output?
I'm sorry if I've missed something obvious here but just trying to work out *how many* of these I need;-)
well, wait a moment,it might be appropriate to describe us as a NT shop too, as a large proportion of our client work gets completed on NT machines running Photoshop, InDesign and soft proofers, but that doesnt mean we have to turn into a bunch of fascists, which is the blunt word which comes to mind reading these guys rant on with catch phrases like "Destroy their servers and fire them,".
This sort of attitude just smacks of ill considered intolerance, the arrogance of power as egos can so easily be stroked to get fatuous comments like these for a magazine to please its advertising base.
Now NT, or moreover Win2k in our case sucks more the more we learn about it - but our "decision" is hardly final and all encompassing. (talking about a statistical majority of installs here) We tend to think system choices are flexble at the level of investment and size we are, according to how flexible we are to learn and adapt - as opposed maybe to being brainwashed and adopt. It would seem to me a pity for IT professionals to be so tied into one system or another and I wonder, as we grow, if his is not a fact of life we are not actively trying to avoid / ignore.
This will probably come across as a disclaimer of a kind, but in our shop a majority of NT systems were chosen in part because we trade advertising slots (which drives design work as well) and needed CTI which was not available on the Mac, giving us the choice between coding or supporting two systems. We were too small to choose these other options. Had Apple been on schedule with - X then we would have been switching out this year already. Right now we're also running Deneba Canvas beta and Framemaker Beta on SUSE and RedHat, praying that the WINE libs will allow us a third horse choice (IMO Canvas + Framemaker covers the bulk of our design and typography needs, but I wish these guys would do properly native ports). But my point here is that historical arrogance (in Apple's case) was a turn off for us, just as the arrogance of the comments by Di Como and Shapiro in the article are also a turn off, and I expect this may be the same with many other readers. If we had a choice (and amusingly it would be mine;-) between retooling and retraining and having browbeating thugs like these guys run our networks, I'll take the retrain/ retool route and I bet people here will be with me.
If we were a *big* company, I would expect any IT/IS director we hired to be knowledgable and competant (not necessarily guru) across Linux/Unix as well as other operating systems (NT and maybe AS400 come to mind, permitting Mac OS X can at least be administrated as BSD despite the key advantages lying elswhere). The issue I see here is that it is damn hard not to be increasingly tied into "proprietary solutions" as you grow _if_ you are not prepared to hire a classy internal shop of coders. Summarily (because there's too little space here for much of a discussion) I think that the internal shop wins hands down for a business case, if you can do it. And so for us the most difficult thing here right now is trying to raise the technical awareness of all our users to inculcate the kind of environment which can be responsive to in house developments, thus preempting the unnecessary or misguided end user cries for shrink wrap crap and locked in licenses.
This brings me to my other real gripe with the opinions given in the article - e.g. "Investigate to determine if a business case has been presented to management for the offending box,". Oh, man just why are these people mouthing off about a comment that is surely just a fact of life for anyone with a IT policy?? To reiterate such a simple rule for the "public benefit" in an article - just smacks of chest beating. "Look at us, _see_ how hard we are with our rule book!". What nonsense. And what is a supposedly reputable trade site doing replicating elementary mantra under the guise of an article? This is not advice, nor is it educative. It is simply autodidacts in print (or html).
Comments about third party apps not being supported on Linux just reinforce the problems you can store up for yourself when you pay someone else and trust them to provide for your needs. In comparison with this it feels very good - and very healthy for our business - to be able to seriously consider linux or BSD for the range of tasks we can.
I can in fact imagine ('cos I'm a cynic) a time we might have linux across virtually all our systems, and, having been so sold on the patent advantages, act in a similar hostile way to introductions of new systems which are not "tried and trusted". Man, will we have dropped the ball if that ever happens.
"We sat down with them and agreed that they could use their Linux box as long as our phone didn't ring when they had critical problems," Maday says. "So far, we haven't heard one thing from them since the meeting we had a few months ago."
Could this be the second (see MS advert article)inadvertent admission of the day by a Windows IT zealot that Linux has advantages? Or am I missing a trend?
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
Now I'm not knocking anything here, because I use Star Office 5.2 myself and got our office switched to it, but will the current efforts translate into e.g. a review in Business Week print edition (like MacOs-X got one time ages ago) and the kind of coverage which actually pursuades executives without recourse to code analysis or monopolies debates?
Surely given the adspend Sun places these days, a few more mainstream reviewers could be perusuaded / invited to load a copy and write it up?
Anyone seen a good print or online review out there in the mainstream business press?
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
Add a link to the VCF from your website and each time you refer a visitor to the VCF from the link on your website from now until VCF 4.0, you'll receive a point. The website making the most referrals (and therefore earning the most points) will win $50 cash and will be featured on the home page of the Vintage Computer Festival website!
Slashdot Wins!
Surely? Unless you've registered and goth the $50 for yourself;-)
should work for any slashdotted site, just pick a word not too generic to be eliminated by Google's engine bu tlikely to appear on every page, and enjoy the cached files!
Don't you just love Google?
Karma whoring for my/. soul please look away if this is obvious to you
If this lends credence to the benchmarks, which were btw on screenshots as : Drhystone 1262 ; Whetstone 242 ; Eight Queens 2477 . . . . yada yadda but *this is what interests me* : ALU mem bandwidth 1408mb/s, FPU mem bwdth 1520mb/s, then that 400mhz bus really does kick butt and I'm prepared to live with buying a new mobo
I suppose if some daredevil cared to mirror the pages I might email them, but I'm otherwise scaredy today:-(
Idle random thoughts only, you can look the other way now
It's no coincidence that Intel made their big investment around then.
That may be precisely it.
Intel *at a guess* invested in Be to prevent platform drift away from their processors / chipsets and mo'bo's
Not that I expect Intel care for Be, just that they do realise that purchasers of all kinds, private to mega - corporate actually like the idea that hardware can be repurposed - it lends an inestimable air of confidence, having bought e.g. a ThinkPad to say "Oh sod it, if I don't like this Win2k crap for work, I'll put Slack on dual boot . .." or equally to know your accounting machines running Excel + whatever make nice NAT boxen or whatever . . . I digress
I'ts not that Linux won't run on PPC, but MKLinux is under Apple's wing, and Jobs' thumb, and I don't hear much word about LinuxPPC / Yellowdog when I walk into accounts or design [design at least has heard of BeOS here, but of course because of the history and personalities and i 'fess up, accounts haven't heard of Be, but they *are aware* of other major OSs' running on Intel boxen (Novell e.g.)/idle thought/ maybe that was the real reason behind Be being ditched, no - one must challenge Jobs, see block quote below)]
So if you agree (and I do) with Darchmare in post 232, that Apple the hardware co' make out okay for whatever reason you buy their kit, what's missing is a feeling that you can buy in (an investment whichever way you look at it) and choose if you wish to use what you buy independantly from the manufacturer's explicit (very explicit) wishes
I need to give it some more though maybe, but my impression is that the hardware vendor Apple only went to (some) lengths to support diverse OSs' when they felt very marginal indeed. Stability (financial)returns with a sense of Apple taking it's marbles home.
Does anything grow under the shadow of Jobs' Apple which he doesn't want? Before I gett modded (-1) Flaimbait, I add, with haste, IF you could make a whole bunch of people feel better about that question (please don't infer from this post I have answered it myself yet) we all might find a renewed confidence and broad adoption of Apple, whether as a hardware or software company.
Finally, if as is suggested Be got the Hump over not being supported financially by Apple then the fragile excuse quoted by poster 209
"...Apple has refused to give them help with" fits just fine.
>In saying that does anyone remember how JL Gasse said once that BeOS was his apology for what he did keeping Mac hardware high priced with the Snow White (no, not new iMac, that was the old FrogDesign philoshopy that gave those wonderful Mac II's and IIsi's). . maybe JLG felt he was
owed something by his old protege, this could be understood given the ego's in the Apple boardroom and the obvious amount of emotion JLG and others invested in the old Apple [note for readers, is this so today?])
No, no coincidence . . Have you *used* Windows 2000? Every program *is* a bug.
(If 70,000 god damn programs got written, there had to be a lot of "my god that app's crap, let's try to build something decent" - i mean how many app catagories can you think of ? - and so by virtue of the platform's general crappiness, making sure nothing gets written good, each new app spawns another worse one. . . )
Soviet disintegration is still a continuing process. And it feels to me at least like a timely reminder of the fragility of the purported framework of privacy protection on which we rely.
One of the most striking charcteristics (not because it is non obvious in other circumstances but because in this case it was so extreme) of the disintegration of the USSR is the wholesale destruction of trust mechanisms. Organised crime thrives in a society absent control or the means to control by civilian policing, so "mafiosi" protection rackets are virtually legitimised because they are the most available form of strength. Maybe to understand how such can be accepted one has to think again about the comforting mantle that a uber state provides, and that even when it is clear to citizenry this has failed, pride patriotism and wishful thinking all conspire to find excuses and justifications, just as the Communist Party post Perestroika and free elections evoked this idea sucessfully.
No doubt Stasi files in East Germany and similar in satellite Eastern Block countries came into "wrong" hands via private transactions. If anything this database release is a reminder of the private control excercised over information by individuals in Russia today
In the West, only a conceptual - practical link exists to maintain some control over similar happening, i.e. the Legislative, Exceutive and Policing bodies differentiation and deliniation.
Forgetting for a moment that in any country such as the USA or UK or France (well maybe I'll omit the UK, given present conditions:( the understanding of responsibilities to private citizenry and the differentiation between enforcement of state edict and private protection is quite well ingrained. BUT INTRODUCE ANY PROTRACTED FORM OF INSTABILITY, and everything comes down to individual actions.
There is nothing whatsoever to actually *stop* someone in posession of sensitive personal documents from distributing them freely, though they might expect punishment in present circumstances. But it can be done. There was if I remember correctly a story here some while back about how Canada wanted to keep 2000 fields of data on each and every citizen. Quite a few posters rightly thought that an threat to invasion of privacy. I and others wanted to know where from they could find 2000 fields of valid data to populate such a database, and even though someone poined out such info would be handy ineven tof crisis to trace people lost (provided the same crisis did not take out the power or other lines to the relevant servers)what I kept on thinking about was WHO would be responsible to manage such a repository? I.e. WHo would integrate such a powerful database with existing and know precepts of privacy and accountability?
Okay, my bad because I've drifted off topic now.I think the thing to recognise in this Russian release of info (sorry but my Ruski is not good enough to tell much of what is going on with the actual data:( is that someone somewhere got ahold of the data, which could very conceivably happen anywhere, and they decided they had a GREAT ENOUGH INTEREST to release it, the same principal of action which could apply, you guessed it - anywhere.When thinking about that it comes to my mind the idea that State control over information is all about balances of interest. State enforces because its interest (by proxy in a democracy therefore the interest of the "people") is greater than whatever interest you were pursuing by your action. If you are prepared to trade one type of interest for another, or to shirk other peoples' estimation of what that balance is, then maybe, just maybe, you could do anything.
Finally, it's a sad thing to watch, but recent history in Russia seems to be solely about a few private interests, and not about a nation at all, the ideas about which and concerning the people just get used as a sideshow whenever convenient. I don't think that's a new thing. I wonder now how many reasons I can come up with (privately, after posting this) for WHY none of this would ever hapen here
which seems to be fine to show all the DL's you might want
(FYI : 1.CorelPHOTOPAINT9Lnx.tar.gz (182,520 KB) - A complete archive that will install on both Debian-based and RPM-based distributions
2.CorelPHOTOPAINT9LnxDEB.tar.gz (91,989 KB) - Will install on Debian-based distributions (e.g. Corel® LINUX® OS, Debian GNU/Linux)
3.CorelPHOTOPAINT9LnxRPM.tar.gz (92,601 KB) - Will install on RPM-based distributions (e.g. Red Hat, SuSE, Linux-Mandrake, TurboLinux, Caldera OpenLinux)
May save you some time too:)
Only why is it that I get the idea in my head all these WINE ports are designed to cripple acceptance of Linux on the desktop.
I mean fill the machine up with emulated boatware to the point it chokes . . . won't Win2k suddenly look efficient and attractive (*NOT*, but you get the point?)
I agree with the Abandonware comments elsewhere *but* not for financial health reasons:
Until Corel does a native port they haven't abandoned PhotoPaint, they've abandoned Linux
Maybe they'll pull out a native version for $$$$$ just as soon as they get a user base, but only much, much later on.
Well it may not rain (sorry, my bad) But one for the geophysicists and definitely an article which poses some questions Discovery Channel would sure love to be able to answer, *Exclusive*:-)
Second that for iBooks. Only the packaging and screen size put me off in any way. Ah, and - if i get my memory of the demo right, I'm not filling up a PCMCIA card slot for wireless - the Airport is a mobo attachment.
Moreover PC cards tend to suck battery big time. I gather the IBM T20's have built in RJ45s for ethernet. 'Bout time. Can we have SCSI too (inbuilt) please? Poster in reply to my other thread in this story held out a good memory for a PowerPC TP with SCSI which ran nice and cool too.
IBM - build these features *in* and let me really have use of those TypeII / Type III slots *for expansion* (Like a 1gig type III hd from San Disk maybe:) )
Completely envious of long battery life. Bought extra battery for my TP600, erm £160 or maybe 220USD. Completely crap batterylife on these, and i really look after the batteries, fully cycling them, careful about partial discharge, recharge. Very envious of friends with Powerbooks which *do* give nearly 8 hours life (with dual battery set up).
So very needed, good batteries. Will drive wireless lan sales (no cables needed at home or office for anything). Will drive laptop sales - no more worrying about the nest outlet proximity on long haul journeys (I like trains in Europe, and economy gerenerally doesnt yet have nice facilities for this:( )
Remember the Mac Portable? Lead Acid batteries kept it running for ever. What tech is being used now? Might IBM have come up with something really fresh for a fall launch? Like the multi - gig micro- drives, only something ewveryone will really buy into?:-P
Slashdot Mirror
Achieving High Levels of Instruction-Level Parallelism with Reduced Hardware Complexity is the only link to the project I can find at HP Labs.
dammit, I do!
My original though is already posted here but to recap, I think what is occuring is a trade between Moore's law dependant compute growth and a recalcitrant Software developer's world which will never just recompile (even for a price) but wants to upgrade you, with all the problems that entails.
Throwing hardware at the problem, or silicon specifically, is hardly new, and it is distasteful to many people as a solution. But also wrt your downfall scenario, yes the PPro was a flop but this was in no small part because it had (very nice) on chip L2 chaches of up to 2MB, which *cost* and priced it out 'till Intel packaged the PII w/ PPro core and off chip, 1/2 core speed, typically smaller (cheaper) L2s.
Well, it's not like Intel (and HP) haven't had about 5 years or so to manage that.
like a lot of these things (PPro RISC cores to run interpreted x86 instructions), the underlying architecture seems to be there just to accelerate in silcon existing app code.
The day Microsoft, or for that matter any other software vendor offers split upgrade paths e.g. NT4.0SP5 for Itanium w/ bug patches apart from tied featuritis and other effective "upgrade" lock - ins, is the day we might actaully see the kind of huge leaps in performance all this new harware keeps promising.
btw anyone know of an app that would actually want to be coded to EPIC?
It is expected to translate 80x86 instructions into VLIW instructions (or directly to decoded instructions) the same way that Intel P6 and AMD K5/K6/K7 CPUs do, but with a larger number of instructions issued using the VLIW design, it should be faster. However, if native IA-64 code is even faster, this may finally produce the incentive to let the 80x86 architecture finally fade away.
scary
better have that 4000 way Itty workstation to run my 16 bit apps
When the Itanium is announced as commercially available (apparently a whole bunch or 6,000 or so eval units are out there) it is not going to be new processor tech that cuts it (if at all) but the compilers, which have to break down (probably CISC legacy) code into the parrelisations the Itty will want.
Yes, I'm griping, and yes what I add is not much news to most readers here, but as /. grabs more and more readers from the broad user community (okay that's a blatant guess, but I just figure) there IS room on the small news items to say as much as to be accurate. i.e. "new processor family" sounds fine, but "new architecture" I'm not so sure about.
I always wonder if the news items are actually edited, or just picked from a bunch of incoming. Whatever. (That's also not a bitching comment, but I do wonder . . .)
the following is from Avie Tevanien's deposition in US vs Microsoft :
"100. When Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 3.0, it touted the ability of its browser to use plug-ins develped for Netscape Navigator. After the introduction of Internet Explorer 3.0, Apple was able to introduce a QuikTime plug-in that was fully compatible with both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer 3.0 browsers. (Schaaff Depo., pp. 114-15) However, with the successive releases of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0, Microsoft Windows 98, and Microsoft multimedia software, Apple has seen a steady degradation of QuickTime's capability to play back a variety of QuickTime-compatible media file formats while operating with Microsoft's Internet Explorer running the Windows operating system. (Schaaff Depo., p. 117-17)"
So, looking beneath the top story (of the deposition) concerning Microsoft making plug-ins incompatible with version revisions of IE, at the beginning MS touted compatibility with NS. Microsoft had to come up to speed fast with development on a new product whose acceptance would depend on people being able to use it with an installed base of sites and plug-ins. Microsoft then brought every bit of engineering focus it could to bring a bag of acquired Spyglass code up to the level of a product people actually wanted. Microsoft had to compete with a massive installed base of a product which undoubtedly pleased people.
This effort was certainly driven by many of that company's connected desires but bear in mind this original effort, for IE 3.0 occurred before IE was bundled and other distribution factors unique to Microsoft's position became significant. Even if you are Microsoft, you could not use massive distribution muscle until product is at least parity with what people expect from a product. (and IIRC IE 2.x was not that)
Once Microsoft had a product that worked, it could lever other factors and advantages uniquely available to it. Absolutely key to this was that IE's shipping version worked with the installed base of the market share leader.
To me the most surprising issue with regards Mozilla and Netscape is that they do not realise that to effect a swicth of products form a massive nstalled base, you *have to be compatible*. Excel used to play nice with Lotus 123 files. Word used to do fine with Word Perfect and Ami Pro files. There are vast layers of compatibility modes in most Microsoft product, and emulaion has been a fundamental compnent of Microsoft's success (at many levels of the word, and with obvious drawbacks). (Hmm, I wonder if Linux starts hurting real bad they'll re write the POSIX 1 dlls in Win2k as lxrun.dll :) Given the advantages in development, distribution and culture (in terms of user affinity) available to a real open - source product, is Netscape exploting it's strengths in the right order?
If NS 6.0 or Mozilla can build from scratch the depth of complexity in XUL and many other modules such as MathML and SVG, could Netscape / Mozilla leverage IE features so that they have the actual possibility to be broadly accepted without every web developer retasking their skills? Individuals and companies are actually *crying out* for a cross - platform browser they can deploy without incompatibility issues. I do not for a minute believe that Netscape - AOL - SUN could not master the marketing savvy to make that (as a future reality) a serious coup. This sort of thing - cross platform standardisation - is precisely what made and makes Microsoft sweat. By reinventing the wheel, or at least broadening the goals fo Mozilla far and wide _but_not_inclusive_ of IE compliance, is the the possibility to keep the most dominant software company on its toes simply foregone?
When the Netscape - AOL - SUN alliance was announced, many here on Slashdot, including much of the press, touted AOL's ability to force a massive distribution to AOL subscribers. AOL bought Netscape for $4bln. The Mozilla team, who remain in the most part Netscape employees are ultimately employed by AOL. Of the Alliance, presuming that the old Netscape is no more, only SUN is not dependant on the Windows platform. Did AOL buy Netscape as a hedge, a bargaining chip? How possibly could AOL release NS 6.0 as a component of it's service if the press in this story and others is true? For a long while there appears to have been a inertia with Mozilla. Partly this is because of the scale of the project. But also now - in the O'Reilly piece linked elswhere, it is being reported that significant bugs are being refused form the code tree. A code freeze is all right, but surely not for a major number release? It would help if Netscape or AOL would clarify their strategy regarding this. But that may be moot already, even by the time I post this. What interests me now is if patches to add a IE compatibility layer, for wont of a better description, would be accepted. Of course there's a quick retort to that - "Why do you want to add the biggest bug ever to the tree - even if the code works?". If the alternative might be years of wait, baited breath, for a seachange in platform use or a wholesale re-estimation of web designers' skills simultaneous with a massive realignment of consumer perception as to what constitutes a "working" browser - then I say, at least, put it in.
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it seems that COPYRIGHT DESIGNS AND PATENTS ACT 1988 effective in England and Wales might pre-empt Microsoft's EULAs prohibiting kinds of reverse engineering and decompilation
Hope this will be useful to someone.
Section 50B: Decompilation
50B.--(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program expressed in a low level language-
(a) to convert it into a version expressed in a higher level language, or
(b) incidentally in the course of so converting the program, to copy it, (that is, to "decompile" it), provided that the conditions in subsection (2) are met.
(2) The conditions are that-
(a) it is necessary to decompile the program to obtain the information necessary to create an independent program which can be operated with the program decompiled or with another program ("the permitted objective"); and
(b) the information so obtained is not used for any purpose other than the permitted objective.
(3) In particular, the conditions in subsection (2) are not met if the lawful user-
(a) has readily available to him the information necessary to achieve the permitted objective;
(b) does not confine the decompiling to such acts as are necessary to achieve the permitted objective;
(c) supplies the information obtained by the decompiling to any person to whom it is not necessary to supply it in order to achieve the permitted objective; or
(d) uses the information to create a program which is substantially similar in its expression to the program decompiled or to do any act restricted by copyright.
(4) Where an act is permitted under this section, it is irrelevant whether or not there exists any term or condition in an agreement which purports to prohibit or restrict the act (such terms being, by virtue of section 296A, void.
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Okay this may already be redundant, but can someone tell how to equate foot candle infomation provided by Color Kinetics into an equivalent for 100 Watt 240 volt 30deg tungsten halogen output?
I'm sorry if I've missed something obvious here but just trying to work out *how many* of these I need ;-)
well, wait a moment,it might be appropriate to describe us as a NT shop too, as a large proportion of our client work gets completed on NT machines running Photoshop, InDesign and soft proofers, but that doesnt mean we have to turn into a bunch of fascists, which is the blunt word which comes to mind reading these guys rant on with catch phrases like "Destroy their servers and fire them,".
This sort of attitude just smacks of ill considered intolerance, the arrogance of power as egos can so easily be stroked to get fatuous comments like these for a magazine to please its advertising base.
Now NT, or moreover Win2k in our case sucks more the more we learn about it - but our "decision" is hardly final and all encompassing. (talking about a statistical majority of installs here) We tend to think system choices are flexble at the level of investment and size we are, according to how flexible we are to learn and adapt - as opposed maybe to being brainwashed and adopt. It would seem to me a pity for IT professionals to be so tied into one system or another and I wonder, as we grow, if his is not a fact of life we are not actively trying to avoid / ignore.
This will probably come across as a disclaimer of a kind, but in our shop a majority of NT systems were chosen in part because we trade advertising slots (which drives design work as well) and needed CTI which was not available on the Mac, giving us the choice between coding or supporting two systems. We were too small to choose these other options. Had Apple been on schedule with - X then we would have been switching out this year already. Right now we're also running Deneba Canvas beta and Framemaker Beta on SUSE and RedHat, praying that the WINE libs will allow us a third horse choice (IMO Canvas + Framemaker covers the bulk of our design and typography needs, but I wish these guys would do properly native ports). But my point here is that historical arrogance (in Apple's case) was a turn off for us, just as the arrogance of the comments by Di Como and Shapiro in the article are also a turn off, and I expect this may be the same with many other readers. If we had a choice (and amusingly it would be mine ;-) between retooling and retraining and having browbeating thugs like these guys run our networks, I'll take the retrain/ retool route and I bet people here will be with me.
If we were a *big* company, I would expect any IT/IS director we hired to be knowledgable and competant (not necessarily guru) across Linux/Unix as well as other operating systems (NT and maybe AS400 come to mind, permitting Mac OS X can at least be administrated as BSD despite the key advantages lying elswhere). The issue I see here is that it is damn hard not to be increasingly tied into "proprietary solutions" as you grow _if_ you are not prepared to hire a classy internal shop of coders. Summarily (because there's too little space here for much of a discussion) I think that the internal shop wins hands down for a business case, if you can do it. And so for us the most difficult thing here right now is trying to raise the technical awareness of all our users to inculcate the kind of environment which can be responsive to in house developments, thus preempting the unnecessary or misguided end user cries for shrink wrap crap and locked in licenses.
This brings me to my other real gripe with the opinions given in the article - e.g. "Investigate to determine if a business case has been presented to management for the offending box,". Oh, man just why are these people mouthing off about a comment that is surely just a fact of life for anyone with a IT policy?? To reiterate such a simple rule for the "public benefit" in an article - just smacks of chest beating. "Look at us, _see_ how hard we are with our rule book!". What nonsense. And what is a supposedly reputable trade site doing replicating elementary mantra under the guise of an article? This is not advice, nor is it educative. It is simply autodidacts in print (or html).
Comments about third party apps not being supported on Linux just reinforce the problems you can store up for yourself when you pay someone else and trust them to provide for your needs. In comparison with this it feels very good - and very healthy for our business - to be able to seriously consider linux or BSD for the range of tasks we can.
I can in fact imagine ('cos I'm a cynic) a time we might have linux across virtually all our systems, and, having been so sold on the patent advantages, act in a similar hostile way to introductions of new systems which are not "tried and trusted". Man, will we have dropped the ball if that ever happens.
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"We sat down with them and agreed that they could use their Linux box as long as our phone didn't ring when they had critical problems," Maday says. "So far, we haven't heard one thing from them since the meeting we had a few months ago."
Could this be the second (see MS advert article)inadvertent admission of the day by a Windows IT zealot that Linux has advantages? Or am I missing a trend?
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
. .
It's short, but here's a review of Star Office 5.2 on Computerworld
Now I'm not knocking anything here, because I use Star Office 5.2 myself and got our office switched to it, but will the current efforts translate into e.g. a review in Business Week print edition (like MacOs-X got one time ages ago) and the kind of coverage which actually pursuades executives without recourse to code analysis or monopolies debates?
Surely given the adspend Sun places these days, a few more mainstream reviewers could be perusuaded / invited to load a copy and write it up?
Anyone seen a good print or online review out there in the mainstream business press?
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
. .
Since I know nothing about this subject since yesterday when I came across
this excellent review of SensAble feedback device in Byte.com
the link's all I have to say. But the review of the SensAble kit seems to have some good insights.
==Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply==
Add a link to the VCF from your website and each time you refer a visitor to the VCF from the link on your website from now until VCF 4.0, you'll receive a point. The website making the most referrals (and therefore earning the most points) will win $50 cash and will be featured on the home page of the Vintage Computer Festival website!
Slashdot Wins!
Surely? Unless you've registered and goth the $50 for yourself ;-)
Go and read this google cached link
No it's not a link to something sick - it's a competition page on the vintage.org site.
Surely Slashdot wins *de facto* HANDS DOWN?
"No really, check it out . . .
[sig]I wasn't concentrating, really I didn't mean to Karma whore . . . "
yeah, the mirror definately kicks butt for simplicity :-)
so if there's a legit mirror, and the main site is real suffering, why don't the editors put your link on the front page story?
hope you're not paying for that lovely bandwidth I just enjoyed to get to the mirror . . .
but, tho' i say it myself, the Google idea I posted *will work for any indexed site* even if there's no mirror
or if the mirror gets slashdotted, he he ;-)
Slashdotted methinks (stuck loading front page).
Cheap trick gets round slashdot effectso you can actually read something and be able to post with intelligence ;) is :
use Google's Advanced Search and search vintage.org for a word like "computer" or "old" like this :-) and load up the cached pages of the site
should work for any slashdotted site, just pick a word not too generic to be eliminated by Google's engine bu tlikely to appear on every page, and enjoy the cached files!Don't you just love Google?
Karma whoring for my /. soul please look away if this is obvious to you
According to The Register, 2cpu.com's benchmarks of the PentiumIV aka Williamette have been "Satlinised" (or is it Apple'd?;-)
If this lends credence to the benchmarks, which were btw on screenshots as : Drhystone 1262 ; Whetstone 242 ; Eight Queens 2477 . . . . yada yadda but *this is what interests me* : ALU mem bandwidth 1408mb/s, FPU mem bwdth 1520mb/s, then that 400mhz bus really does kick butt and I'm prepared to live with buying a new mobo
I suppose if some daredevil cared to mirror the pages I might email them, but I'm otherwise scaredy today :-(
Idle random thoughts only, you can look the other way now
they should have kept Be around on PPC
It's no coincidence that Intel made their big investment around then.
That may be precisely it.
Intel *at a guess* invested in Be to prevent platform drift away from their processors / chipsets and mo'bo's
Not that I expect Intel care for Be, just that they do realise that purchasers of all kinds, private to mega - corporate actually like the idea that hardware can be repurposed - it lends an inestimable air of confidence, having bought e.g. a ThinkPad to say "Oh sod it, if I don't like this Win2k crap for work, I'll put Slack on dual boot . . ." or equally to know your accounting machines running Excel + whatever make nice NAT boxen or whatever . . . I digress
I'ts not that Linux won't run on PPC, but MKLinux is under Apple's wing, and Jobs' thumb, and I don't hear much word about LinuxPPC / Yellowdog when I walk into accounts or design [design at least has heard of BeOS here, but of course because of the history and personalities and i 'fess up, accounts haven't heard of Be, but they *are aware* of other major OSs' running on Intel boxen (Novell e.g.) /idle thought/ maybe that was the real reason behind Be being ditched, no - one must challenge Jobs, see block quote below)]
So if you agree (and I do) with Darchmare in post 232, that Apple the hardware co' make out okay for whatever reason you buy their kit, what's missing is a feeling that you can buy in (an investment whichever way you look at it) and choose if you wish to use what you buy independantly from the manufacturer's explicit (very explicit) wishes
I need to give it some more though maybe, but my impression is that the hardware vendor Apple only went to (some) lengths to support diverse OSs' when they felt very marginal indeed. Stability (financial)returns with a sense of Apple taking it's marbles home.
Does anything grow under the shadow of Jobs' Apple which he doesn't want? Before I gett modded (-1) Flaimbait, I add, with haste, IF you could make a whole bunch of people feel better about that question (please don't infer from this post I have answered it myself yet) we all might find a renewed confidence and broad adoption of Apple, whether as a hardware or software company.
No, no coincidence . . Have you *used* Windows 2000? Every program *is* a bug. (If 70,000 god damn programs got written, there had to be a lot of "my god that app's crap, let's try to build something decent" - i mean how many app catagories can you think of ? - and so by virtue of the platform's general crappiness, making sure nothing gets written good, each new app spawns another worse one. . . )
Soviet disintegration is still a continuing process. And it feels to me at least like a timely reminder of the fragility of the purported framework of privacy protection on which we rely.
One of the most striking charcteristics (not because it is non obvious in other circumstances but because in this case it was so extreme) of the disintegration of the USSR is the wholesale destruction of trust mechanisms. Organised crime thrives in a society absent control or the means to control by civilian policing, so "mafiosi" protection rackets are virtually legitimised because they are the most available form of strength. Maybe to understand how such can be accepted one has to think again about the comforting mantle that a uber state provides, and that even when it is clear to citizenry this has failed, pride patriotism and wishful thinking all conspire to find excuses and justifications, just as the Communist Party post Perestroika and free elections evoked this idea sucessfully.
No doubt Stasi files in East Germany and similar in satellite Eastern Block countries came into "wrong" hands via private transactions. If anything this database release is a reminder of the private control excercised over information by individuals in Russia today
In the West, only a conceptual - practical link exists to maintain some control over similar happening, i.e. the Legislative, Exceutive and Policing bodies differentiation and deliniation.
Forgetting for a moment that in any country such as the USA or UK or France (well maybe I'll omit the UK, given present conditions :( the understanding of responsibilities to private citizenry and the differentiation between enforcement of state edict and private protection is quite well ingrained. BUT INTRODUCE ANY PROTRACTED FORM OF INSTABILITY, and everything comes down to individual actions.
There is nothing whatsoever to actually *stop* someone in posession of sensitive personal documents from distributing them freely, though they might expect punishment in present circumstances. But it can be done. There was if I remember correctly a story here some while back about how Canada wanted to keep 2000 fields of data on each and every citizen. Quite a few posters rightly thought that an threat to invasion of privacy. I and others wanted to know where from they could find 2000 fields of valid data to populate such a database, and even though someone poined out such info would be handy ineven tof crisis to trace people lost (provided the same crisis did not take out the power or other lines to the relevant servers)what I kept on thinking about was WHO would be responsible to manage such a repository? I.e. WHo would integrate such a powerful database with existing and know precepts of privacy and accountability?
Okay, my bad because I've drifted off topic now.I think the thing to recognise in this Russian release of info (sorry but my Ruski is not good enough to tell much of what is going on with the actual dataFinally, it's a sad thing to watch, but recent history in Russia seems to be solely about a few private interests, and not about a nation at all, the ideas about which and concerning the people just get used as a sideshow whenever convenient. I don't think that's a new thing. I wonder now how many reasons I can come up with (privately, after posting this) for WHY none of this would ever hapen here
enough of my ranting :)
I too got bounced from the links above . . .
but a little snip from the url gave me ftp://ftplinux2.corel.com/pub/linux/PhotoPaint9/
which seems to be fine to show all the DL's you might want
(FYI : 1.CorelPHOTOPAINT9Lnx.tar.gz (182,520 KB) - A complete archive that will install on both Debian-based and RPM-based distributions
2.CorelPHOTOPAINT9LnxDEB.tar.gz (91,989 KB) - Will install on Debian-based distributions (e.g. Corel® LINUX® OS, Debian GNU/Linux)
3.CorelPHOTOPAINT9LnxRPM.tar.gz (92,601 KB) - Will install on RPM-based distributions (e.g. Red Hat, SuSE, Linux-Mandrake, TurboLinux, Caldera OpenLinux)
May save you some time too :)
Only why is it that I get the idea in my head all these WINE ports are designed to cripple acceptance of Linux on the desktop.
I mean fill the machine up with emulated boatware to the point it chokes . . . won't Win2k suddenly look efficient and attractive (*NOT*, but you get the point?)
I agree with the Abandonware comments elsewhere *but* not for financial health reasonsUntil Corel does a native port they haven't abandoned PhotoPaint, they've abandoned Linux
Maybe they'll pull out a native version for $$$$$ just as soon as they get a user base, but only much, much later on.
New Scientist also reports that flash floods may be occuring on Mars, scarring its terrain.
Well it may not rain (sorry, my bad) But one for the geophysicists and definitely an article which poses some questions Discovery Channel would sure love to be able to answer, *Exclusive* :-)
Second that for iBooks. Only the packaging and screen size put me off in any way. Ah, and - if i get my memory of the demo right, I'm not filling up a PCMCIA card slot for wireless - the Airport is a mobo attachment.
Moreover PC cards tend to suck battery big time. I gather the IBM T20's have built in RJ45s for ethernet. 'Bout time. Can we have SCSI too (inbuilt) please? Poster in reply to my other thread in this story held out a good memory for a PowerPC TP with SCSI which ran nice and cool too.
IBM - build these features *in* and let me really have use of those TypeII / Type III slots *for expansion* (Like a 1gig type III hd from San Disk maybe :) )
==Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply==
Completely envious of long battery life. Bought extra battery for my TP600, erm £160 or maybe 220USD. Completely crap batterylife on these, and i really look after the batteries, fully cycling them, careful about partial discharge, recharge. Very envious of friends with Powerbooks which *do* give nearly 8 hours life (with dual battery set up).
So very needed, good batteries. Will drive wireless lan sales (no cables needed at home or office for anything). Will drive laptop sales - no more worrying about the nest outlet proximity on long haul journeys (I like trains in Europe, and economy gerenerally doesnt yet have nice facilities for this :( )
Remember the Mac Portable? Lead Acid batteries kept it running for ever. What tech is being used now? Might IBM have come up with something really fresh for a fall launch? Like the multi - gig micro- drives, only something ewveryone will really buy into? :-P