AFAIK, Record shops can charge whatever they wish for CD's. It's just if they charge less than what the RIAA recommends, they lose out on advertising subsidies. So really, it's more the guts of the store owners that's to blame.
The RIAA is not microsoft. They won't bar a store from selling CD's if they violate their agreements. They just won't give the store extra consideration. If someone out there would start selling CD's for less than what the RIAA says they should go for, they'ed stand a great chance of radically increasing their business, so long as they advertised heavily. I guess the though goes that the money lost by selling music for cheaper isn't made up for with extra volume, after you factor in the expenses of notifying everyone that you're the cheapest.
Are you just doing this because you're in a bad mood and what to shoot your mouth off or something?
Look up the history of the internet, why don't you? You'll find the Arpanet. It was used for years by just the government and universities. Later on, the web was built on top of, or maybe as a subset of, the internet. But that's basically an interface, nothing more.
The government was largely responsible for funding and building the intital "internet", and then basically passed the ball on to other entities. To deny that they had any involvement is rather ludicrous.
Then you stand to lose the context of the conversations. Many comments refer to other comments that they're not directly attatched to. ALso there's a sort of learning process... People start a conversation with lots of questions and as the facts are filled in, the whole picture gets clearer. But just reading the answers to the questions prior to them being asked doesn't really show them in their full light.
Well... Everyone's already done that with Transmeta's products... What's the difference? Or is it just that someone was actually skeptical about something baring the "L" word in it's name or description?
I don't have a link for you, but I did see true "business card" size CD's at Seybold a few weeks ago. 3.5 by 2", but the CD area was maybe 1.8" in diameter. I think they said they stored 45 MB? So not as much, but so much more portable. Think of all those things you'd want on CD, but don"t want to be hassled to carry one...
It's also really good for web types around here... you can store basically your whole portfolio on the cd, and just give it out to acquaintances as a business card.
Solaris is much slower than Linux on single CPU congifurations, but slap them both into a 64 CPU box and watch which one actually scales higher... Linux will drop off around 8 CPU's.
Ummm, solaris is free (except for the $75 "media kit") for ANY use, so long as you use 8 CPU's or less.
Sun hardware is much more finely made than intel hardware. IT's meant for running enterprize applications for months and years at a time.
Besides that, the argument once again shifts to application availability. So long as there are tons of applications available for Solaris that aren't available for Linux, Sun has a purpose in life. Is there a 64-bit database available for Linux? One that's supported by a major vendor? I don't think so... Oracles there, but it appears to be available for intel only.
And lastly... You get what you pay for. WHo cares if it's overpriced to start with if it lasts much longer with less headaches?
I would think that there's much more bandwidth inside a machine than through any of it's external connections (any form of ethernet, SCSI, firewire). So long as the tasks that each CPU is doing takes a short time to finish, they'ed probably enjoy the added bandwidth. For tasks that act like Seti@home or any of the distributed net tasks, there'd probably be no advantage, since each CPU gets a chunk of work and then works on that for a while and then asks for more work.
Also, applications need to be written for Beowolf, as far as I know. IF the operating system natively supports upto 1000 processors (i'd assume 1024 would be logical), then that means you can run the same exact binary on a single CPU workstation all the way up to a supercomputer. It'd probably be great for developers of supercomputing applications.. They could test their apps in the same exact atmostpher that they'll be ultimately running in.
I don't think that anyone's trying to advocate a standard interface across all implentations of Linux. Just one desktop environment. Meaning, for mainstream desktops.
Then pick one! And everyone else should, too. There's a team of people working on KDE and another separate team working on Gnome. There's people working on Gnome apps and other people working on KDE apps.
Why don't the project leaders of Gnome and KDE get together, pick apart one another's projects, figure out what's better about each of them and then start a revised project that incorporates the best pieces of both?
Yes, we'd end up with one more window manager, but hopefully that'd be the one everyone would stick with...
It's absurd right now... If a newbie gets Redhat, they use Gnome... Caldera users use KDE... That makes switch distro's harder, because there are new things to learn, and it splinters the application base. In the end, in order to be widely compatible, everyone will need to have to have both installed. Talk about unneeded bloat!
You're looking too far ahead... by the time OS/2 came, it was too late for IBM...
Why'd they license their OS from Microsoft rather than just buy microsoft? ever wonder that?
Well, if they did that, then they would have been in the position of selling both hardware and the software of the IBM PC. That was EXACTLY why they were in anti-trust trouble in the first place, albiet in the mainframe market. IBM wanted none of that, and didn't really see what was happening when they decided to license their OS from Microsoft and use of the shelf parts rather than build a proprietary box.
If IBM hadn't been in the midst of turmoil, they'ed have just bought Microsoft directly and ended the PC revolution as we now know it.
Well, why bother buying a 1st generation crusoe machine when in a few months after they 1st ship, better ones will be available? And after that, you know, the next set of machines wil lbe even better.
No.
If someone needs a machine today, they should buy one today. The machines tomorrow will always be much better. After 15 or 20 years of desktop computers, hasn't that lesson been learnt yet?
Microsoft is one company... They look at these things too...
What good would it do to raise the applications divisions sales by $2 billion if it led to a $1.5 billion loss in operating systems, a $500 million loss in development tools, $50 million dollar loss in corporate support services, $50 million loss due to people forgoing their MSCE's...
That's a shallow list, but i'd tend to think that with all their ancillary programs, like client access licenses, etc... They'ed lose a LOT more than $100 million in sales across the company simply by allowing Office to ship for Linux. It's not like it would happen next quarter. But it would.
Microsoft is at least standing very confidently defense against the DOJ. Even if they've lost this round, there'll still be a round of appeals. If they showed any signs of reorganizing themselves according to how they thought they'ed be broken up, that'd almost be a sign of guilt, which they probably don't want to do around now...
RIGHT NOW, microsoft is one company. The OS divisions line against linux is that among other things, lots of apps arent' out for it. If the apps division released office for linux, that'd be cutting off the nose despite their face. shooting themselves in the foot. Pick an analogy!
What messed IBM up in the early 80's was that they were SO concerned with the antitrust trial that they didn't really bother to think about the ramifications of what they were doing in the PC business. Microsoft knows better. They're going to continue on their current course until they have no choice but to stop.
Like I said, with companies standardized on x86, a Mac version of office means nothing to microsoft. Office for Macs means nothing, since most companies outside of publishing don't want to standardize on hardware available only from one source. They could port office to Solaris, AIX, Irix, and everyother non-x86 operating system and do fine. But the moment they release it for FreeBSD, Linux, or BeOS (as examples), they're opening the gates to their downfall.
Most office workers use soley microsoft office at work. Some might use Lotus Notes as well, and that'd be another hurdle to cross. If a company has 5,000 computers all running just windows and office, then they can save 250,000/year or however long their hardware upgrade cycle is, just by switching their desktop OS to linux and staying with office.
------------- P eople always seem to think that since Office is available for the Mac, that means it will arrive for Linux. But most companies are standardized on x86 hardware, so they're not going to jump ship to the Mac platform because of Office. However, if office existed for Linux (and not Star Office... No matter what everyone thinks, it's not the same as having the real thing in the minds of many many people. I'm actually one of them) many IS or IT types would be VERY tempted to switch their desktops to Linux...
Office is the "killer app" that windows has and Linux isn't getting any time soon. Regardless as to how anyone tries to justify it, it just isn't worth it for microsoft to allow Office to arrive for Linux. Companies are standardized on Office. If office is only available for Windows, then they're standardized on Windows as well.
Microsoft has stated that their strategy is to make Windows the most compelling platform available... They have no vested intereste in Linux succeeding.
Remember IE? How no company's would use it because it'd lock them into windows? So Microsoft released IE4 for HP/UX, Solaris, and maybe another Unix... Company's then moved to IE... now where's IE4.5 let alone version 5 for any of those platforms
Porting Office to Linux would be the biggest speed boost that Linux has ever seen... There's simply no reason that Microsoft would want to do that... It'd eat into their OS business so much, that the rest of their businesses would suffer immensley.
Think about it:
If you don't need MS Windows to run MS office, then you don't need MS Visual Studio to write apps with... If you're not running Windows, you also don't need to run IE, because there's lots of other browsers available, and no one's railroading you into using IE or any other one. If you're not using IE, then why would you want to use IIS as your internet platform? Then again, if you're not using windows on the desktop, what sense does it have to have windows be your server? Not much... The argument can be made that Windows as servers might work better because it's made by the same people that make the desktop OS... that argument would go away...
If you want to last, you can make it last. Acid free paper is available, and it does a great job at preserving documents. But today, so much of our information becomes out-dated, there seems to be little point in preserving what we know no longer applies. Old science books, etc...
Laser prints, i'd guess, will be fairly durable... Inkjets prints, probably not... that's just a pure guess, though
My worry is that at some distant point in the future, all our paper will have rotted away and people think that the CDs were our primary means of communication, like Babylonian pottery shards..
Actually no. Paper has proven to be one of our most durable ways of storing data. Egyptian papyrus from 3000 years ago is still more or less intact. CD's on the otherhand, will last for a 100 years in a "BEST CASE" scenario. Most will last much less time. CDRs might last 25 years. There are other variables besides media itself. I've seen several CD's from the early 80's that refuse to play these days. They're not at all scratched, but the theory goes that the original ink they used to print on them actually was a bit corrosive over a great span of time.
In order to remain readable, digital data must remain more or less intact. A few missing bits in the application needed to open a file can pretty much reduce your odds of opening that file by 100%. Analog data, on the other hand, degrades much more gracefully... It may start to fade, but there's no intermediary between having the data and being able to read it (you don't need an extra "application" to read a newspaper).
I've heard that this is actually going to be one of the least documented periods in human history, because all of our data is stored digitally and periodically purged. Even if it's not, places like NASA are generating data faster than they're able to back it up and move their old archives onto newer media.
The interfaces (SCSI, IDE, Firewire) have been able to handle uncompressed broadcast quality video for a long time now... Until just recently we've needed huge disk arrays in order to handle those streams. This will probably be the first drive that can handle that on it's own (27+ MB/Sec).
Of course it's much easier to insert faster crystals into PCI cards than it is to make the jump from 7200 to 10,000 and now 15,000 RPM's... Sad thing is, i think all but one of my drives are 5400 RPMs... But next time i need one, i'll probably just buy on the high end again.
DES is probably irrelevant to this discussion. It's completely outdated at this point in time. That's why there's the whole AES submission process going on.
Triple DES is probably more relevant these days, and it's effectively 112 bits... Even that's probably good enough for today and the next few years.
The whole thing about crypto has been there is no security through obscurity. If you have a sufficiently strong algorithm, you can just hand the cipher text to whomever you'd like and the only way they can decode it is by bruteforcing the message. I'd think it'd be much simpler to implement a reliable system using keys that are 4 bits longer than to integrate 16 separate cryptosystems into one application.
Remember, for every 1,000 lines of code programmers introduce how many bugs?
The key to a reliable security solution would be to use an extremely well tuned application... Not a piece of bloatware with tons of interconnected parts.
Blowfish scales from 32 to 448 bits. That's one example. I just popped by the counterpane website to find that... That's a LOT of scalability in one algorithm.
With PKI, it really seems that all you can do is shift the bottleneck from one point to another... Either it's the RSA component, the symetric component, the RNG, or the key servers themselves...
By the way, PGP 6.5 offers a choice of
RSA or Diffie Hellman for key exchange and IDEA CAST or Triple DES as the symetetric component.
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AFAIK, Record shops can charge whatever they wish for CD's. It's just if they charge less than what the RIAA recommends, they lose out on advertising subsidies. So really, it's more the guts of the store owners that's to blame.
The RIAA is not microsoft. They won't bar a store from selling CD's if they violate their agreements. They just won't give the store extra consideration. If someone out there would start selling CD's for less than what the RIAA says they should go for, they'ed stand a great chance of radically increasing their business, so long as they advertised heavily. I guess the though goes that the money lost by selling music for cheaper isn't made up for with extra volume, after you factor in the expenses of notifying everyone that you're the cheapest.
Go away, troll. Or at least speak seriously.
wow! An intellegent troll!!! I'm amazed! :)
Are you just doing this because you're in a bad mood and what to shoot your mouth off or something?
Look up the history of the internet, why don't you? You'll find the Arpanet. It was used for years by just the government and universities. Later on, the web was built on top of, or maybe as a subset of, the internet. But that's basically an interface, nothing more.
The government was largely responsible for funding and building the intital "internet", and then basically passed the ball on to other entities. To deny that they had any involvement is rather ludicrous.
Get a clue. The government & acadamia actually paid for and developed the internet.
Then you stand to lose the context of the conversations. Many comments refer to other comments that they're not directly attatched to. ALso there's a sort of learning process... People start a conversation with lots of questions and as the facts are filled in, the whole picture gets clearer. But just reading the answers to the questions prior to them being asked doesn't really show them in their full light.
Well... Everyone's already done that with Transmeta's products... What's the difference? Or is it just that someone was actually skeptical about something baring the "L" word in it's name or description?
I don't have a link for you, but I did see true "business card" size CD's at Seybold a few weeks ago. 3.5 by 2", but the CD area was maybe 1.8" in diameter. I think they said they stored 45 MB? So not as much, but so much more portable. Think of all those things you'd want on CD, but don"t want to be hassled to carry one...
It's also really good for web types around here... you can store basically your whole portfolio on the cd, and just give it out to acquaintances as a business card.
Solaris is much slower than Linux on single CPU congifurations, but slap them both into a 64 CPU box and watch which one actually scales higher... Linux will drop off around 8 CPU's.
Ummm, solaris is free (except for the $75 "media kit") for ANY use, so long as you use 8 CPU's or less.
Sun hardware is much more finely made than intel hardware. IT's meant for running enterprize applications for months and years at a time.
Besides that, the argument once again shifts to application availability. So long as there are tons of applications available for Solaris that aren't available for Linux, Sun has a purpose in life. Is there a 64-bit database available for Linux? One that's supported by a major vendor? I don't think so... Oracles there, but it appears to be available for intel only.
And lastly... You get what you pay for. WHo cares if it's overpriced to start with if it lasts much longer with less headaches?
I would think that there's much more bandwidth inside a machine than through any of it's external connections (any form of ethernet, SCSI, firewire). So long as the tasks that each CPU is doing takes a short time to finish, they'ed probably enjoy the added bandwidth. For tasks that act like Seti@home or any of the distributed net tasks, there'd probably be no advantage, since each CPU gets a chunk of work and then works on that for a while and then asks for more work.
Also, applications need to be written for Beowolf, as far as I know. IF the operating system natively supports upto 1000 processors (i'd assume 1024 would be logical), then that means you can run the same exact binary on a single CPU workstation all the way up to a supercomputer. It'd probably be great for developers of supercomputing applications.. They could test their apps in the same exact atmostpher that they'll be ultimately running in.
I don't think that anyone's trying to advocate a standard interface across all implentations of Linux. Just one desktop environment. Meaning, for mainstream desktops.
Then pick one! And everyone else should, too. There's a team of people working on KDE and another separate team working on Gnome. There's people working on Gnome apps and other people working on KDE apps.
Why don't the project leaders of Gnome and KDE get together, pick apart one another's projects, figure out what's better about each of them and then start a revised project that incorporates the best pieces of both?
Yes, we'd end up with one more window manager, but hopefully that'd be the one everyone would stick with...
It's absurd right now... If a newbie gets Redhat, they use Gnome... Caldera users use KDE... That makes switch distro's harder, because there are new things to learn, and it splinters the application base. In the end, in order to be widely compatible, everyone will need to have to have both installed. Talk about unneeded bloat!
You're looking too far ahead... by the time OS/2 came, it was too late for IBM...
Why'd they license their OS from Microsoft rather than just buy microsoft? ever wonder that?
Well, if they did that, then they would have been in the position of selling both hardware and the software of the IBM PC. That was EXACTLY why they were in anti-trust trouble in the first place, albiet in the mainframe market. IBM wanted none of that, and didn't really see what was happening when they decided to license their OS from Microsoft and use of the shelf parts rather than build a proprietary box.
If IBM hadn't been in the midst of turmoil, they'ed have just bought Microsoft directly and ended the PC revolution as we now know it.
Well, why bother buying a 1st generation crusoe machine when in a few months after they 1st ship, better ones will be available? And after that, you know, the next set of machines wil lbe even better.
No.
If someone needs a machine today, they should buy one today. The machines tomorrow will always be much better. After 15 or 20 years of desktop computers, hasn't that lesson been learnt yet?
Microsoft is one company... They look at these things too...
What good would it do to raise the applications divisions sales by $2 billion if it led to a $1.5 billion loss in operating systems, a $500 million loss in development tools, $50 million dollar loss in corporate support services, $50 million loss due to people forgoing their MSCE's...
That's a shallow list, but i'd tend to think that with all their ancillary programs, like client access licenses, etc... They'ed lose a LOT more than $100 million in sales across the company simply by allowing Office to ship for Linux. It's not like it would happen next quarter. But it would.
Microsoft is at least standing very confidently defense against the DOJ. Even if they've lost this round, there'll still be a round of appeals. If they showed any signs of reorganizing themselves according to how they thought they'ed be broken up, that'd almost be a sign of guilt, which they probably don't want to do around now...
RIGHT NOW, microsoft is one company. The OS divisions line against linux is that among other things, lots of apps arent' out for it. If the apps division released office for linux, that'd be cutting off the nose despite their face. shooting themselves in the foot. Pick an analogy!
What messed IBM up in the early 80's was that they were SO concerned with the antitrust trial that they didn't really bother to think about the ramifications of what they were doing in the PC business. Microsoft knows better. They're going to continue on their current course until they have no choice but to stop.
Like I said, with companies standardized on x86, a Mac version of office means nothing to microsoft. Office for Macs means nothing, since most companies outside of publishing don't want to standardize on hardware available only from one source. They could port office to Solaris, AIX, Irix, and everyother non-x86 operating system and do fine. But the moment they release it for FreeBSD, Linux, or BeOS (as examples), they're opening the gates to their downfall.
Most office workers use soley microsoft office at work. Some might use Lotus Notes as well, and that'd be another hurdle to cross. If a company has 5,000 computers all running just windows and office, then they can save 250,000/year or however long their hardware upgrade cycle is, just by switching their desktop OS to linux and staying with office.
-------------
P eople always seem to think that since Office is available for the Mac, that means it will arrive for Linux. But most companies are standardized on x86 hardware, so they're not going to jump ship to the Mac platform because of Office. However, if office existed for Linux (and not Star Office... No matter what everyone thinks, it's not the same as having the real thing in the minds of many many people. I'm actually one of them) many IS or IT types would be VERY tempted to switch their desktops to Linux...
Office is the "killer app" that windows has and Linux isn't getting any time soon. Regardless as to how anyone tries to justify it, it just isn't worth it for microsoft to allow Office to arrive for Linux. Companies are standardized on Office. If office is only available for Windows, then they're standardized on Windows as well.
Microsoft has stated that their strategy is to make Windows the most compelling platform available... They have no vested intereste in Linux succeeding.
Remember IE? How no company's would use it because it'd lock them into windows? So Microsoft released IE4 for HP/UX, Solaris, and maybe another Unix... Company's then moved to IE... now where's IE4.5 let alone version 5 for any of those platforms
as linux picks up speed
HA!
Wrong.
Porting Office to Linux would be the biggest speed boost that Linux has ever seen... There's simply no reason that Microsoft would want to do that... It'd eat into their OS business so much, that the rest of their businesses would suffer immensley.
Think about it:
If you don't need MS Windows to run MS office, then you don't need MS Visual Studio to write apps with... If you're not running Windows, you also don't need to run IE, because there's lots of other browsers available, and no one's railroading you into using IE or any other one. If you're not using IE, then why would you want to use IIS as your internet platform? Then again, if you're not using windows on the desktop, what sense does it have to have windows be your server? Not much... The argument can be made that Windows as servers might work better because it's made by the same people that make the desktop OS... that argument would go away...
If you want to last, you can make it last. Acid free paper is available, and it does a great job at preserving documents. But today, so much of our information becomes out-dated, there seems to be little point in preserving what we know no longer applies. Old science books, etc...
Laser prints, i'd guess, will be fairly durable... Inkjets prints, probably not... that's just a pure guess, though
My worry is that at some distant point in the future, all our paper will have rotted away and people think that the CDs were our primary means of communication, like Babylonian pottery shards..
Actually no. Paper has proven to be one of our most durable ways of storing data. Egyptian papyrus from 3000 years ago is still more or less intact. CD's on the otherhand, will last for a 100 years in a "BEST CASE" scenario. Most will last much less time. CDRs might last 25 years. There are other variables besides media itself. I've seen several CD's from the early 80's that refuse to play these days. They're not at all scratched, but the theory goes that the original ink they used to print on them actually was a bit corrosive over a great span of time.
In order to remain readable, digital data must remain more or less intact. A few missing bits in the application needed to open a file can pretty much reduce your odds of opening that file by 100%. Analog data, on the other hand, degrades much more gracefully... It may start to fade, but there's no intermediary between having the data and being able to read it (you don't need an extra "application" to read a newspaper).
I've heard that this is actually going to be one of the least documented periods in human history, because all of our data is stored digitally and periodically purged. Even if it's not, places like NASA are generating data faster than they're able to back it up and move their old archives onto newer media.
The interfaces (SCSI, IDE, Firewire) have been able to handle uncompressed broadcast quality video for a long time now... Until just recently we've needed huge disk arrays in order to handle those streams. This will probably be the first drive that can handle that on it's own (27+ MB/Sec).
Of course it's much easier to insert faster crystals into PCI cards than it is to make the jump from 7200 to 10,000 and now 15,000 RPM's... Sad thing is, i think all but one of my drives are 5400 RPMs... But next time i need one, i'll probably just buy on the high end again.
DES is probably irrelevant to this discussion. It's completely outdated at this point in time. That's why there's the whole AES submission process going on.
Triple DES is probably more relevant these days, and it's effectively 112 bits... Even that's probably good enough for today and the next few years.
The whole thing about crypto has been there is no security through obscurity. If you have a sufficiently strong algorithm, you can just hand the cipher text to whomever you'd like and the only way they can decode it is by bruteforcing the message. I'd think it'd be much simpler to implement a reliable system using keys that are 4 bits longer than to integrate 16 separate cryptosystems into one application.
Remember, for every 1,000 lines of code programmers introduce how many bugs?
The key to a reliable security solution would be to use an extremely well tuned application... Not a piece of bloatware with tons of interconnected parts.
Blowfish scales from 32 to 448 bits. That's one example. I just popped by the counterpane website to find that... That's a LOT of scalability in one algorithm.
With PKI, it really seems that all you can do is shift the bottleneck from one point to another... Either it's the RSA component, the symetric component, the RNG, or the key servers themselves...
By the way, PGP 6.5 offers a choice of
RSA or Diffie Hellman for key exchange and
IDEA CAST or Triple DES as the symetetric component.