While I'm not a GNU/Opensource fan, I think that RMS' stance and idealisms make a whole lot more sense than ESR's. Where ESR kind of looks the other way when someone asks him how a company is supposed to make money by making their products free, replying "don't worry, their products will be so much better that they'll make up their revenues elsewhere", at least RMS is completely honest in his stance of saying that he's not exactly sure the Free Software is compatible with corporate desire for profit. It's much more straight forward and truthful to say it that way, rather than trying to push the idea of selling support and consulting as a means to regenerate lost revenues.
I definetly appreciate his view point of protecting our rights much more than ESR's gibberish about Cathedrals and Bazaars. It only works for glamourous aspects of projects, or very common pieces that real people can get access to. And, though the FSF/Opensource/whover else has created some great software, as well as some not so great software, I'm not convinced that it reall does lead to better software as eric points out. Freer software, yes. But better? Not always.
You're just asking too much for a vendor to sell a machine such as this or the iOpener for $50.00. A "respectable" manufacturer that did what you're asking for would be out of business inside a couple months, unless they became paper billioners through an IPO or something. If you're looking for a machine for your $50.00, go through the want ads and buy yourself a used 486 and be happy with that... Otherwise, your thanks to the company for producing a nifty piece of hardware will bankrupt them.
Most of the articals in the New York times are either authored by Times staff, freelancers, or picked up from the Associated Press. You rarely if ever see them point to USA Today, Boston Globe, or the Washington Post as the source for their stories. Slashdot rarely investigates it's own stories, rather it waits for it's readers to point it to stories they want to discuss. Lastly, Slashdot only has one interview per week... Two if we're really lucky.
Not that any of that's bad. I just don't consider Slashdot to be at all a journalistic site. It's a discussion site. They find other peoples news, post a link to it here, and let us talk about it. I like that. I do wish though that the slashdot authors would keep their own opinions out of the headlines and let people discuss things freely, rather than being herded into a certain line of thought, but that's a discussion for another day.
Comparing creating Art to moving Ice is nonsense, in my eyes. Even back in the middle ages, minstrels moved from town to town with the earnest hope of earning a few coins so they could continue their adventures. One could liken that to making money touring, but the sad fact is that we live in a world dominated by MTV, oppressive record contracts, and an attatchment to a flavor of the week, so far as music goes. None of that bodes well for artists touring...
For one, most tours are conducted at a loss in order to stimulate record sales. The majority of those sales go back to pay back the people that put up the money to record the CD in the first place. Unfortunately lots of artists have signed contracts giving the record company's their standard (and in my eyes, too large) cuts for their troubles. Not buying their CD as a form of protest against the record company simply screws the artist even more than they were in the first place.
The prevailing mentality around here is one which completely devalues artists. If you enjoy their work you should be paying them for it. It's that simple. Otherwise you're just saying "you're worthless".
If they're worthless, why in the world are you even listening to their music?
I love bringing this argument up... People constantly flame companies for "sharing" the changes they've made to GPLed products without complying fully with the license by releasing the source to their modifications, yet it's completely fine with the same group of people to "share" the music they have even when they have no right to share it.
The internet may cover the world, but so should respect. After all, we wouldn't need any laws if people simply respected one another and did what was right all the time. Unfortunately that's not how we act, so that's why laws are created.
Ice is a naturally occuring substance. Technology was created that allowed it to be created in places that it would not otherwise be suitable for. The music that you hear on the radio, on mtv, in the car, buy at record stores, etc... is not naturally occuring. That's a big difference.
How many people here would program if they weren't ever going to see any money from their efforts? Programming for linux doesn't count, because the vast majority of linux developers do earn livings programming elsewhere. I'm talking period. If you were never going to earn a single cent programming, how many people would have even thought about it as a career choice? Maybe you could make money selling support? Doubtful. Would the technology world be where it is today if not? Again, very doubtful.
We live in a capitalistic society. People expect and need to make money from their efforts. If America was Belgium or something, then perhaps the government would sponsor artists so they could go about making art and not worry about making ends meet. That's not where I live. That's not where the artists that are suing napster live, either. They've got bills to pay, kids to put through college, retirement to worry about, and all the other day to day stuff that we all deal with.
It could be stipulated that the OS company publish their complete API in order to lower the applications barrier to entry, which is what the entire case centers around.
So far as mutual NDA's go... The businesses could be free to do whatever they want, ASIDE from conglomerating with one another. That would be contempt of court, or whatever the jargon would be called (i'm not a lawyer).
As for thinking that the broken up companies will get along and prop eachother up... Once they're actually distict entities, distint management, distict shareholders etc, their goal will be to make money. If they're not trying to achieve that goal, that would pave the way for shareholder lawsuits...
As a single company, Microsoft can now state basically that the reason they don't want to develop Office for Linux is because all businesses use Office, that'd mean they'ed lose money from Windows licenses if businesses switched their desktops to Linux and still ran Office. Separate companies could not make that same argument.
But napster is a network created to trade MP3's on. And, I'd wager that 99% of the MP3's on there aren't legally allowed to be traded. Plus, Napster turns a blind eye to the whole thing. It'd be one thing if they actively logged and displayed IP addresses to make users more accountable. Or required email address from an ISP rather than one of the free email services. They do none of that. It's like a bar that lets people sell drugs in their establishment. By turning their head and acting like nothing's going on, they become liable for the actions of their patrons.
I really fail to see any legitmate use to Napster. If someone has a legitmate need to listen to a CD, they can listen to the CD, convert the track themselves, or register with Beam-It, tell Beam-It they have the CD, prove it, and be able to listen to it from anywhere.
When 90%+ of the material Napster's network is illegal, obviously the idea, if it was a legitmate one to start out with, isn't working as planned and should be completely scrapped and revamped.
Telling artists that their music should be free is like everyone saying that you know, sysadmins, network technicians, and programmers should do their work for free since they enjoy it so much... Maybe they can make money training other IT professionals, making motivational speaches, or something like that. They made their career choice just as everyone here did, or will once they graduate college.
If the problem is that there's only one or two good songs on the CD, don't buy the CD. Find better artists that are able to produce a whole album's worth of good material. They still do exist, you know...
But the OS company will no longer have the App company to prop them up, and vice versa. The OS company would need to publish all of their API's for everyone to see, not just giving the ones they want to give. That would allow other developers to create other Office suites with the same functionality as Office.
Likewise, the App company might not be as married to Windows. Their main function will be to make money, rather than preserve the Windows monoploy at all costs, which is really what they do right now. Maybe they'ed develope a version of office for Linux, BeOS, etc... Once they've developed it for Linux and a GUI (Gnome or KDE), it'd be relatively painless for them to port to other Unix's, provided they had the same desktop environment installed.
So, maybe Office will remain dominant... But with them developing software for other platforms, the main virtue of Windows will disappear. And once people start investigating other platforms, they might start looking at other office suites as well - StarOffice and WordPerfect are reasonable contenders.
How can allowing customers to buy PC's for lower prices (through a published price list for Windows, insuring that all vendors can offer systems for the same cost, rather than having to pay artifically inflated prices for Windows because the vendor doesn't want to do exactly as Microsoft states), allowing consumers more software to choose from (rather than watching them buy brand X's software until Microsoft decides to bundle that function with Windows and destroy the market for that type of software as happened with browsers and disk compression and now is happening with streaming media), letting companies choose the best tools for running their networks (rather than the ones whose standards were hijacked by Microsoft ei kerberos), and letting customers choose which OS they want to run without being worried whether their favorite software will be available for it (Most companies are standardized on Microsoft Office. Yes, Office is available for the MacOS, but the newest version that has all the features of the Windows version always appears at least a year later than the windows version) possibly hurt customers?
I apologize for the long run on sentence!
Breaking Microsoft into an OS company and an Application company and adding a few ground rules that Microsoft would HAVE to follow would go a long way to restoring and insuring competition to the computer market.
If the OS company had to publish it's prices for Windows, we'd all benefit.
If the Application company could develop for any platform rather than just Windows, how would that harm us?
And talk about doubletalk... For years, whenever people complained that Microsofts applications seemed to work better than anyone elses on Windows, and that they therefore must have an in with the OS teams and have access to "secret" API's, Microsoft always proclaimed that there was an invisible wall between divisions, and that it's application department only got the same information as outside vendors. These days, Microsofts' line is that the two departments actually work very closely together and therefore being broken up would be very very bad for the company. So basically, they've been lying to everyone for years about how they operate...
Yes, Microsoft did do a good job at marketing the PC to consumers... Apple could have had that market years ago, but they were arrogant and for some time their machines were priced twice as much as equivalent Wintel machines... But a few years ago Microsoft turned from the semi-benevolent dictator to being obsessed with owning every possible revenue stream it saw. At that point, the benefits of having a Microsoft in the world evaporated. When they can walk into apple and seriously state that they won't develope Office unless Apple drops Quicktime, that's consumer harm. They're no longer trying to advance the computing world rather than trying to just dominate it.
I really, trully dislike one-time pads being brought up in to these discussions.
For one, they're extremely unwieldy. They need to be as large as the message is that you're sending. That pretty much rules out any civilian use of them. In the context of the military, I could see the practicality of them, being that subs could doc and while they were getting new supplies, they could have new hard drives loaded onto them containing new random data for future communications. Those hard drives could be disbursed across the Navy.
That works good in a system as structured as the military, but for regular, civilian communications, it's next to useless. There's no way that one-time pads can ever be incorporated into e-commerce or anything on as large a scale as that.
It still is possible to break a one time pad with brute force... The problem is that every outcome is equally likely. You might break it and read the message and decide "that can't possibly be what this message should say" and pass by it. But if your keying material isn't as random as you hope it might be, then it becomes easier to identify possible messages.
I'll reiterate and reiterate... One time pads can't really work on a large scale. They're just not practical.
And in this context, obviously i wasn't talking about 8 bit keys. Rather, try using 4096 bit RSA keys to pass either triple DES or Twofish keys back and forth. Then, you've got a form of communication that's going to be next to impossible to decipher, unless someone figures out a way to factor that 4096 bit key of yours.
Brute force isn't a vulnerability. It's a last resort attack. If someone has to rely on brute force to decode your messages, you're in pretty safe hands.
The ENTIRE point of public key cryptography (RSA, DH)is so that a person in the middle could observe each and every transmission and still be unable to decode the messages being passed back and forth, so long as the private keys (which are never transmitted) are well protected. That's how people buy stuff over the internet.
There are plenty of crypto protocols which work fine when a third party is listening
Just curious. Shouldn't all crypto protocols work fine when a third party listening? If no one else is listening other than who you're talking to, you don't really need crypto!
As far as I know, Microsoft was embedding the MAC Address in documents created by their products... Which is how the guy that wrote the Melissa virus was caught. Not that that's a good thing!
In a completely separate incedent, it was found that the Windows Registration Wizard was sending all the data about your configuration back to Microsoft, regardless as to whether or not a user said it was okay when they were presented with a dialog asking permission.
Two completely separate incidents, which took place a while back... After the fallout, Microsoft released 2 utilities... One that would replace the standard Windows registration wizard with an:improved: one that actually obeyed your commands, and another that removed the embedded hardware info in Office docuents.
The problem with Windows is, I think, that it doesn't ask all of it's questions at once, which would let you go somewhere and do something besides watch the ads for other Microsoft products. Instead, every few screens it asks you something, and then when it finally gets to the point of reinstalling the thing, it asks you what to do with each DLL it finds with a different version number... Yes, No, or No to All. And the description it gives for each DLL is non-existant, even with Microsoft's own DLLs... You'd think that at least they'ed know what their own DLL's are, wouldn't you?
Anyways... back to reinstalling windows... Why can't it just scan the drive and present a complete list of DLL's with the current version, the version about to be installed, and a checkbox next to each that says keep or replace? Then you could just run through setup and come back an hour later and see a happy machine.
Redhat's install may not be as pretty as windows, but it gets all the questions out of the way in advance, and it finishes up usually 8 minutes later (for me and my 24x CD ROM)...
Why should AOL want to buy Be? That'd make them need to bring on more developers, when with Linux, the need for developers would be minimized. Plus, they must know that their application is not enough to justify the cost of device, and right now theirs a whole lot more momentum towards creating applications for Linux rather than BeOS.
AOL's only proprietary when it suits them best. They have a proprietary connection protocol because they don't want to be just an ISP and lose ad revenues. They have a proprietary mail client so people can't use none AOL addresses, and again, relegate them to ISP status. But AOLServer web server is completely open for all to view and play with. AOL also owns Mozilla, and as far as i know, haven't tried to dampen any excitement for the project... They'll probably integrate it into their software once it's a bit closer to primetime.
Speaking of Mozilla, AOL must be aware that Linux is the Mozilla developers preferred platform. Kind of like how Windows is Office's preferred platform. Yeah, you might be able to run the software on other OS's, but would you really want to?
Let's just kill off that rumor of yours right now, shall we?:)
For a company that's not aiming at Intel, they sure did mention x86, i386, Pentium, MMX, oh, and even Intel quite a few times during their press conference. Face it, right now if you buy any laptop besides the sub $1000 ones, you're getting an Intel chip inside it. And that's the turf that Transmeta's stepping into... and you say they're not aiming for intel????
Transmeta's been filing patents for years, which led to the immense speculation about what in the world could they be doing. It didn't mean that they've told the world exactly what they were up to, they just filed patents to protect the important stuff, and all the news writers said "well these are the patents they've been issued, and this is who they're hiring... What could they be doing?"
No... I wish transmeta had held off on announcing anything until they had manufacturers lined up behind them saying "this product will be available on this date". it would have been so much more substantial than them simply saying "here's our chip, everybody!"
well... 90% of the computing market doesn't support more than one processor, for one. For two, P3-450's are dirt cheap because they're not being made anymore. And for three, in almost any case besides using the BeOS, I feel that peopel are better served using one fast processor rather than two slow ones.
But if you do want a dual processor system, you can buy one from SGI, Dell, Gateway, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Intergraph, VA Linux, and many other ones. There's also a huge selection of motherboards available, if you're willing to get your hands dirty.
And the example you're pointing to... That's rather unfeasible with todays operating systems (though probably completely feasible in the mainframe world). But for what you're asking for, it sounds like you just want a good scsi controller. Keeps your CPU usage down to around 3% most of the time. Yeah, it costs money and the drives cost more too, but with savings you'll have from buying a machine and mobo with only one processor, it won't work out too badly, and you'll probably notice a bigger bang for your buck.
The point of this isn't to force them to make better software. It's to create competition in the arena's in which they have monopolies, mainly operating systems, but possibly office suites as well after hearing of all the "knife the baby" talks with Apple. No judge in the world is going to dictate a level of quality that must be achieved by a software company...
I'm still personally a huge fan of printed documentation. Help systems still clutter up the interface in a huge way... Hit help, 1/3 of the screen gets covered by the help window. Some programs make the help separate programs that can end up behind the program that you need help in, so you need to constantly flip back and forth between the help window and the application window if you can't remember all the steps required to do whatever it is you're doing. Compare that to reading the index of a book, spending 15 seconds flipping to the correct page, laying the book next to the keyboard so you can type and read at the same time...
That, plus sometimes, if i'm really interested, i'll read the manual at places besides the computer... like on the train, on the couch, etc... Hauling around a laptop is way too cludgy if all you want to do is read a book. You can't really dog ear pages in online references, nor can you apply yellow highlighter to your screen (unless you are able to scroll the window so what you wanted highlighted lines up perfectly with where it was when you actually drew across the screen with the marker at some previous point... but even then, you'll end up with yellow streaks across the screen:).
Lastly, with PDF documentation, 95% of the work is already done, in the writing and typesetting of the manual. All that needs to be done is the actual printing. Even for a large manual, that's still really only $2 or $3 extra for the documentation in printed form. That makes it cheaper for them to distibute the manual than it is for you to print a whole 200 page manual to an inkjet or laser printer.
As a last point, notice that software prices stay the same despite the lack of manuals these days... No matter what the justifications that programmers, QA, or engineers point out, it's all probably spurred by CFO's somewhere going "how can we earn just a few more dollars per box shipped? That manual can go!"
So is that what it is then when the slashdot crew extoles the virtues of Linux over NT, MacOS, and Solaris? Sensationalism to make a point? Either be realistic or don't talk about it. Blowing things way out of proportion one way or another will just bite you in the butt one day.
It's not all roses... Say other manufacturers want to step into the ring and sell Athlon based systems - Dell and HP spring to mind, given Intel's "issues" with delivering PIII's. AMD will have to say "no, sorry, can't do it right now". That gives intel a bunch of time to try to get its' manufacturing up to snuff. Analysts constantly downgrade manufacturers with supply problems, because it means they can't deliver their product to customers... For years, Apple had multi-hundred million dollars worth of back ordered computers, generally the high end of their lines. Was that good? no. It prevented customers from getting what they wanted, so they either bought models that weren't back ordered, which were cheaper and with lower margins, or in really drastic cases, helped fuel the switch to Intel based machines, on the premise that they would no longer have to deal with a single supplier.
So yeah, AMD's backorders are good in the short term, as in everything they can make they can sell, but in the long term it sucks for them, because they can't expand their market at all in terms of signing on other top teir vendors, OEM's, or distributors. Again, with intel messing up on their PIII's and chipsets, and with Rambus having serious issues delivering RIMMs at reasonable prices, now would be the time that AMD would really, really (did i say really?) want to have surplus capacity on hand.
I believe that Palm is actually being sued for patent infringement relating to Grafitti. I forgot who was actually doing the suing, but if my memory's correct, Microsoft will probably wait on the sidelines until it's settled one way or the other and then release a grafitti workalike once the dust has settled. They wouldn't want to knowingly step into another legal crossfire when they've got so many other issues to contend with at this time.
I'd wager that 90%+ of Palm and WinCE device owners user their devices to connect with Windows desktops... Like the MS Office argument, unless they're broken up (note that this is not an endorsement of that idea...) Microsoft really has no incentive to create software that adds value and credibility to Linux. That holds true for MS Office, Visual development tools, and Windows CE devices... The moment that Microsoft comes forward and starts developing tools that make Linux more attractive on the desktop is the day that they admit that they're not king of the desktops anymore.
Think about it. Hand held computers are widely expected to have a much larger growth curve than desktops in the future. But most of them will be synchronized with desktops. Meaning that somewhere along the line, if one buys a handheld, Microsoft will almost assuredly get their $50/desktop as well. Why should they want to risk abandoning that just to be able to go after the other 10% of desktop users who might also use PDA's?
Slashdot Mirror
While I'm not a GNU/Opensource fan, I think that RMS' stance and idealisms make a whole lot more sense than ESR's. Where ESR kind of looks the other way when someone asks him how a company is supposed to make money by making their products free, replying "don't worry, their products will be so much better that they'll make up their revenues elsewhere", at least RMS is completely honest in his stance of saying that he's not exactly sure the Free Software is compatible with corporate desire for profit. It's much more straight forward and truthful to say it that way, rather than trying to push the idea of selling support and consulting as a means to regenerate lost revenues.
I definetly appreciate his view point of protecting our rights much more than ESR's gibberish about Cathedrals and Bazaars. It only works for glamourous aspects of projects, or very common pieces that real people can get access to. And, though the FSF/Opensource/whover else has created some great software, as well as some not so great software, I'm not convinced that it reall does lead to better software as eric points out. Freer software, yes. But better? Not always.
You're just asking too much for a vendor to sell a machine such as this or the iOpener for $50.00. A "respectable" manufacturer that did what you're asking for would be out of business inside a couple months, unless they became paper billioners through an IPO or something. If you're looking for a machine for your $50.00, go through the want ads and buy yourself a used 486 and be happy with that... Otherwise, your thanks to the company for producing a nifty piece of hardware will bankrupt them.
Most of the articals in the New York times are either authored by Times staff, freelancers, or picked up from the Associated Press. You rarely if ever see them point to USA Today, Boston Globe, or the Washington Post as the source for their stories. Slashdot rarely investigates it's own stories, rather it waits for it's readers to point it to stories they want to discuss. Lastly, Slashdot only has one interview per week... Two if we're really lucky.
Not that any of that's bad. I just don't consider Slashdot to be at all a journalistic site. It's a discussion site. They find other peoples news, post a link to it here, and let us talk about it. I like that. I do wish though that the slashdot authors would keep their own opinions out of the headlines and let people discuss things freely, rather than being herded into a certain line of thought, but that's a discussion for another day.
Comparing creating Art to moving Ice is nonsense, in my eyes. Even back in the middle ages, minstrels moved from town to town with the earnest hope of earning a few coins so they could continue their adventures. One could liken that to making money touring, but the sad fact is that we live in a world dominated by MTV, oppressive record contracts, and an attatchment to a flavor of the week, so far as music goes. None of that bodes well for artists touring...
For one, most tours are conducted at a loss in order to stimulate record sales. The majority of those sales go back to pay back the people that put up the money to record the CD in the first place. Unfortunately lots of artists have signed contracts giving the record company's their standard (and in my eyes, too large) cuts for their troubles. Not buying their CD as a form of protest against the record company simply screws the artist even more than they were in the first place.
The prevailing mentality around here is one which completely devalues artists. If you enjoy their work you should be paying them for it. It's that simple. Otherwise you're just saying "you're worthless".
If they're worthless, why in the world are you even listening to their music?
I love bringing this argument up... People constantly flame companies for "sharing" the changes they've made to GPLed products without complying fully with the license by releasing the source to their modifications, yet it's completely fine with the same group of people to "share" the music they have even when they have no right to share it.
The internet may cover the world, but so should respect. After all, we wouldn't need any laws if people simply respected one another and did what was right all the time. Unfortunately that's not how we act, so that's why laws are created.
Ice is a naturally occuring substance. Technology was created that allowed it to be created in places that it would not otherwise be suitable for. The music that you hear on the radio, on mtv, in the car, buy at record stores, etc... is not naturally occuring. That's a big difference.
How many people here would program if they weren't ever going to see any money from their efforts? Programming for linux doesn't count, because the vast majority of linux developers do earn livings programming elsewhere. I'm talking period. If you were never going to earn a single cent programming, how many people would have even thought about it as a career choice? Maybe you could make money selling support? Doubtful. Would the technology world be where it is today if not? Again, very doubtful.
We live in a capitalistic society. People expect and need to make money from their efforts. If America was Belgium or something, then perhaps the government would sponsor artists so they could go about making art and not worry about making ends meet. That's not where I live. That's not where the artists that are suing napster live, either. They've got bills to pay, kids to put through college, retirement to worry about, and all the other day to day stuff that we all deal with.
Stop stealing!
It could be stipulated that the OS company publish their complete API in order to lower the applications barrier to entry, which is what the entire case centers around.
So far as mutual NDA's go... The businesses could be free to do whatever they want, ASIDE from conglomerating with one another. That would be contempt of court, or whatever the jargon would be called (i'm not a lawyer).
As for thinking that the broken up companies will get along and prop eachother up... Once they're actually distict entities, distint management, distict shareholders etc, their goal will be to make money. If they're not trying to achieve that goal, that would pave the way for shareholder lawsuits...
As a single company, Microsoft can now state basically that the reason they don't want to develop Office for Linux is because all businesses use Office, that'd mean they'ed lose money from Windows licenses if businesses switched their desktops to Linux and still ran Office. Separate companies could not make that same argument.
But napster is a network created to trade MP3's on. And, I'd wager that 99% of the MP3's on there aren't legally allowed to be traded. Plus, Napster turns a blind eye to the whole thing. It'd be one thing if they actively logged and displayed IP addresses to make users more accountable. Or required email address from an ISP rather than one of the free email services. They do none of that. It's like a bar that lets people sell drugs in their establishment. By turning their head and acting like nothing's going on, they become liable for the actions of their patrons.
I really fail to see any legitmate use to Napster. If someone has a legitmate need to listen to a CD, they can listen to the CD, convert the track themselves, or register with Beam-It, tell Beam-It they have the CD, prove it, and be able to listen to it from anywhere.
When 90%+ of the material Napster's network is illegal, obviously the idea, if it was a legitmate one to start out with, isn't working as planned and should be completely scrapped and revamped.
Telling artists that their music should be free is like everyone saying that you know, sysadmins, network technicians, and programmers should do their work for free since they enjoy it so much... Maybe they can make money training other IT professionals, making motivational speaches, or something like that. They made their career choice just as everyone here did, or will once they graduate college.
If the problem is that there's only one or two good songs on the CD, don't buy the CD. Find better artists that are able to produce a whole album's worth of good material. They still do exist, you know...
But the OS company will no longer have the App company to prop them up, and vice versa. The OS company would need to publish all of their API's for everyone to see, not just giving the ones they want to give. That would allow other developers to create other Office suites with the same functionality as Office.
Likewise, the App company might not be as married to Windows. Their main function will be to make money, rather than preserve the Windows monoploy at all costs, which is really what they do right now. Maybe they'ed develope a version of office for Linux, BeOS, etc... Once they've developed it for Linux and a GUI (Gnome or KDE), it'd be relatively painless for them to port to other Unix's, provided they had the same desktop environment installed.
So, maybe Office will remain dominant... But with them developing software for other platforms, the main virtue of Windows will disappear. And once people start investigating other platforms, they might start looking at other office suites as well - StarOffice and WordPerfect are reasonable contenders.
How can allowing customers to buy PC's for lower prices (through a published price list for Windows, insuring that all vendors can offer systems for the same cost, rather than having to pay artifically inflated prices for Windows because the vendor doesn't want to do exactly as Microsoft states), allowing consumers more software to choose from (rather than watching them buy brand X's software until Microsoft decides to bundle that function with Windows and destroy the market for that type of software as happened with browsers and disk compression and now is happening with streaming media), letting companies choose the best tools for running their networks (rather than the ones whose standards were hijacked by Microsoft ei kerberos), and letting customers choose which OS they want to run without being worried whether their favorite software will be available for it (Most companies are standardized on Microsoft Office. Yes, Office is available for the MacOS, but the newest version that has all the features of the Windows version always appears at least a year later than the windows version) possibly hurt customers?
I apologize for the long run on sentence!
Breaking Microsoft into an OS company and an Application company and adding a few ground rules that Microsoft would HAVE to follow would go a long way to restoring and insuring competition to the computer market.
If the OS company had to publish it's prices for Windows, we'd all benefit.
If the Application company could develop for any platform rather than just Windows, how would that harm us?
And talk about doubletalk... For years, whenever people complained that Microsofts applications seemed to work better than anyone elses on Windows, and that they therefore must have an in with the OS teams and have access to "secret" API's, Microsoft always proclaimed that there was an invisible wall between divisions, and that it's application department only got the same information as outside vendors. These days, Microsofts' line is that the two departments actually work very closely together and therefore being broken up would be very very bad for the company. So basically, they've been lying to everyone for years about how they operate...
Yes, Microsoft did do a good job at marketing the PC to consumers... Apple could have had that market years ago, but they were arrogant and for some time their machines were priced twice as much as equivalent Wintel machines... But a few years ago Microsoft turned from the semi-benevolent dictator to being obsessed with owning every possible revenue stream it saw. At that point, the benefits of having a Microsoft in the world evaporated. When they can walk into apple and seriously state that they won't develope Office unless Apple drops Quicktime, that's consumer harm. They're no longer trying to advance the computing world rather than trying to just dominate it.
I'll stop now.
I really, trully dislike one-time pads being brought up in to these discussions.
For one, they're extremely unwieldy. They need to be as large as the message is that you're sending. That pretty much rules out any civilian use of them. In the context of the military, I could see the practicality of them, being that subs could doc and while they were getting new supplies, they could have new hard drives loaded onto them containing new random data for future communications. Those hard drives could be disbursed across the Navy.
That works good in a system as structured as the military, but for regular, civilian communications, it's next to useless. There's no way that one-time pads can ever be incorporated into e-commerce or anything on as large a scale as that.
It still is possible to break a one time pad with brute force... The problem is that every outcome is equally likely. You might break it and read the message and decide "that can't possibly be what this message should say" and pass by it. But if your keying material isn't as random as you hope it might be, then it becomes easier to identify possible messages.
I'll reiterate and reiterate... One time pads can't really work on a large scale. They're just not practical.
And in this context, obviously i wasn't talking about 8 bit keys. Rather, try using 4096 bit RSA keys to pass either triple DES or Twofish keys back and forth. Then, you've got a form of communication that's going to be next to impossible to decipher, unless someone figures out a way to factor that 4096 bit key of yours.
Brute force isn't a vulnerability. It's a last resort attack. If someone has to rely on brute force to decode your messages, you're in pretty safe hands.
The ENTIRE point of public key cryptography (RSA, DH)is so that a person in the middle could observe each and every transmission and still be unable to decode the messages being passed back and forth, so long as the private keys (which are never transmitted) are well protected. That's how people buy stuff over the internet.
There are plenty of crypto protocols which work fine when a third party is listening
:)
Just curious. Shouldn't all crypto protocols work fine when a third party listening? If no one else is listening other than who you're talking to, you don't really need crypto!
As far as I know, Microsoft was embedding the MAC Address in documents created by their products... Which is how the guy that wrote the Melissa virus was caught. Not that that's a good thing!
:improved: one that actually obeyed your commands, and another that removed the embedded hardware info in Office docuents.
In a completely separate incedent, it was found that the Windows Registration Wizard was sending all the data about your configuration back to Microsoft, regardless as to whether or not a user said it was okay when they were presented with a dialog asking permission.
Two completely separate incidents, which took place a while back... After the fallout, Microsoft released 2 utilities... One that would replace the standard Windows registration wizard with an
The problem with Windows is, I think, that it doesn't ask all of it's questions at once, which would let you go somewhere and do something besides watch the ads for other Microsoft products. Instead, every few screens it asks you something, and then when it finally gets to the point of reinstalling the thing, it asks you what to do with each DLL it finds with a different version number... Yes, No, or No to All. And the description it gives for each DLL is non-existant, even with Microsoft's own DLLs... You'd think that at least they'ed know what their own DLL's are, wouldn't you?
Anyways... back to reinstalling windows... Why can't it just scan the drive and present a complete list of DLL's with the current version, the version about to be installed, and a checkbox next to each that says keep or replace? Then you could just run through setup and come back an hour later and see a happy machine.
Redhat's install may not be as pretty as windows, but it gets all the questions out of the way in advance, and it finishes up usually 8 minutes later (for me and my 24x CD ROM)...
Why should AOL want to buy Be? That'd make them need to bring on more developers, when with Linux, the need for developers would be minimized. Plus, they must know that their application is not enough to justify the cost of device, and right now theirs a whole lot more momentum towards creating applications for Linux rather than BeOS.
:)
AOL's only proprietary when it suits them best. They have a proprietary connection protocol because they don't want to be just an ISP and lose ad revenues. They have a proprietary mail client so people can't use none AOL addresses, and again, relegate them to ISP status. But AOLServer web server is completely open for all to view and play with. AOL also owns Mozilla, and as far as i know, haven't tried to dampen any excitement for the project... They'll probably integrate it into their software once it's a bit closer to primetime.
Speaking of Mozilla, AOL must be aware that Linux is the Mozilla developers preferred platform. Kind of like how Windows is Office's preferred platform. Yeah, you might be able to run the software on other OS's, but would you really want to?
Let's just kill off that rumor of yours right now, shall we?
For a company that's not aiming at Intel, they sure did mention x86, i386, Pentium, MMX, oh, and even Intel quite a few times during their press conference. Face it, right now if you buy any laptop besides the sub $1000 ones, you're getting an Intel chip inside it. And that's the turf that Transmeta's stepping into... and you say they're not aiming for intel????
Transmeta's been filing patents for years, which led to the immense speculation about what in the world could they be doing. It didn't mean that they've told the world exactly what they were up to, they just filed patents to protect the important stuff, and all the news writers said "well these are the patents they've been issued, and this is who they're hiring... What could they be doing?"
No... I wish transmeta had held off on announcing anything until they had manufacturers lined up behind them saying "this product will be available on this date". it would have been so much more substantial than them simply saying "here's our chip, everybody!"
well... 90% of the computing market doesn't support more than one processor, for one. For two, P3-450's are dirt cheap because they're not being made anymore. And for three, in almost any case besides using the BeOS, I feel that peopel are better served using one fast processor rather than two slow ones.
But if you do want a dual processor system, you can buy one from SGI, Dell, Gateway, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Intergraph, VA Linux, and many other ones. There's also a huge selection of motherboards available, if you're willing to get your hands dirty.
And the example you're pointing to... That's rather unfeasible with todays operating systems (though probably completely feasible in the mainframe world). But for what you're asking for, it sounds like you just want a good scsi controller. Keeps your CPU usage down to around 3% most of the time. Yeah, it costs money and the drives cost more too, but with savings you'll have from buying a machine and mobo with only one processor, it won't work out too badly, and you'll probably notice a bigger bang for your buck.
The point of this isn't to force them to make better software. It's to create competition in the arena's in which they have monopolies, mainly operating systems, but possibly office suites as well after hearing of all the "knife the baby" talks with Apple. No judge in the world is going to dictate a level of quality that must be achieved by a software company...
ohhh... what i'd do for a .mil domain name!
I'm still personally a huge fan of printed documentation. Help systems still clutter up the interface in a huge way... Hit help, 1/3 of the screen gets covered by the help window. Some programs make the help separate programs that can end up behind the program that you need help in, so you need to constantly flip back and forth between the help window and the application window if you can't remember all the steps required to do whatever it is you're doing. Compare that to reading the index of a book, spending 15 seconds flipping to the correct page, laying the book next to the keyboard so you can type and read at the same time...
:).
That, plus sometimes, if i'm really interested, i'll read the manual at places besides the computer... like on the train, on the couch, etc... Hauling around a laptop is way too cludgy if all you want to do is read a book. You can't really dog ear pages in online references, nor can you apply yellow highlighter to your screen (unless you are able to scroll the window so what you wanted highlighted lines up perfectly with where it was when you actually drew across the screen with the marker at some previous point... but even then, you'll end up with yellow streaks across the screen
Lastly, with PDF documentation, 95% of the work is already done, in the writing and typesetting of the manual. All that needs to be done is the actual printing. Even for a large manual, that's still really only $2 or $3 extra for the documentation in printed form. That makes it cheaper for them to distibute the manual than it is for you to print a whole 200 page manual to an inkjet or laser printer.
As a last point, notice that software prices stay the same despite the lack of manuals these days... No matter what the justifications that programmers, QA, or engineers point out, it's all probably spurred by CFO's somewhere going "how can we earn just a few more dollars per box shipped? That manual can go!"
So is that what it is then when the slashdot crew extoles the virtues of Linux over NT, MacOS, and Solaris? Sensationalism to make a point? Either be realistic or don't talk about it. Blowing things way out of proportion one way or another will just bite you in the butt one day.
It's not all roses... Say other manufacturers want to step into the ring and sell Athlon based systems - Dell and HP spring to mind, given Intel's "issues" with delivering PIII's. AMD will have to say "no, sorry, can't do it right now". That gives intel a bunch of time to try to get its' manufacturing up to snuff. Analysts constantly downgrade manufacturers with supply problems, because it means they can't deliver their product to customers... For years, Apple had multi-hundred million dollars worth of back ordered computers, generally the high end of their lines. Was that good? no. It prevented customers from getting what they wanted, so they either bought models that weren't back ordered, which were cheaper and with lower margins, or in really drastic cases, helped fuel the switch to Intel based machines, on the premise that they would no longer have to deal with a single supplier.
So yeah, AMD's backorders are good in the short term, as in everything they can make they can sell, but in the long term it sucks for them, because they can't expand their market at all in terms of signing on other top teir vendors, OEM's, or distributors. Again, with intel messing up on their PIII's and chipsets, and with Rambus having serious issues delivering RIMMs at reasonable prices, now would be the time that AMD would really, really (did i say really?) want to have surplus capacity on hand.
I believe that Palm is actually being sued for patent infringement relating to Grafitti. I forgot who was actually doing the suing, but if my memory's correct, Microsoft will probably wait on the sidelines until it's settled one way or the other and then release a grafitti workalike once the dust has settled. They wouldn't want to knowingly step into another legal crossfire when they've got so many other issues to contend with at this time.
I'd wager that 90%+ of Palm and WinCE device owners user their devices to connect with Windows desktops... Like the MS Office argument, unless they're broken up (note that this is not an endorsement of that idea...) Microsoft really has no incentive to create software that adds value and credibility to Linux. That holds true for MS Office, Visual development tools, and Windows CE devices... The moment that Microsoft comes forward and starts developing tools that make Linux more attractive on the desktop is the day that they admit that they're not king of the desktops anymore.
Think about it. Hand held computers are widely expected to have a much larger growth curve than desktops in the future. But most of them will be synchronized with desktops. Meaning that somewhere along the line, if one buys a handheld, Microsoft will almost assuredly get their $50/desktop as well. Why should they want to risk abandoning that just to be able to go after the other 10% of desktop users who might also use PDA's?