No one has really explained why a company such as dell, gateway, or ibm would not want to just roll their own distro? After finally getting an opportunity to get out from under microsofts thumb, why would they rush to get under Redhats? They have developers on staff. They have huge amounts of tech support on staff who would need little retraining ("from now on, use this database if it's a Linux question")...
I think that that's the next wave. Vendors may even say that their distro is based on RHATsfor a while to get the public used to the idea of them being equals, but in the end there'll probably be Dell Linux and IBM Linux etc... some vendors will maintiain the status quo... others will try to differentiate their products with proprietary enhancements and end up incompatible with the rest of the crowd...
I thought Redhat Linux was free for all comers? I mean, anyone can download their distro... Then they can burn it to CD, install it in every computer in their city, and that's completely legit. I swear this is Redhat just trying to pump their own stock price with announcements that are complete FLUFF...
Maybe if they started entering into money making alliances worthy of their $20 billion dollar market cap, i'd be excited... But right now, they seem to be all about looks and very little about substance.
I haven't ever needed to make a bootable CD. That said, i've never burnt anything but ISO format... One disk, readable by Linux, Windows, and the Macintosh with no extra software... And it keeps long names as well (up to the limits of MacOS 8.6, at least)
I just grabbed a copy for myself... Not like I'll probably do anything with it, but it's still nice to know that I can one day rummage through it and other OS projects, if for nothing else, educational value.
On the second note - Does VA build their own motherboards? Even if they did, I can't imagine that they'ed have enough volume to justify building PPC boards. Even with IBM releasing the specs for free. If you want LinuxPPC, go get a Mac.... But then you'll always get 2nd rate support than if you'd opted for an x86 system... I'm saying that, and I'm a Mac fan...
Can you prove they haven't? Nor can I. Or anyone else. You want them to treat you as "innocent until proven guilty" but won't afford the same protection to them? Yeah, Echelon can exist, just because the capability is there for them to snoop us, who's to say that they really do? Maybe they really do just snoop other countries, and don't want them getting strong crypto for that very reason...
But then, all the conspiracy theorists would have to imagine a new threat.
I thought we went over this when we bugged Rob for his code:-)
If they're not selling their code, they don't need to release it. They can use it in production environments all they want, and it doesn't really matter. Just so long as they don't sell it. I don't quite get that... I thought the GPL stopped that, but according to/., that's the case.
You could try asking them for it. But then they'll just put off release by another week.
I really dislike how Microsoft and their supporters say that this merger puts them in direct competition with Microsoft, and that therefore the anti-trust case is invalid. They said the same thing when AOL bought Netscape... It would seem that anything that AOL does these days invalidates the antitrust trial...
In truth, they're still in very different markets. With a few exceptions (MSNBC, Slate) Microsoft has tried to steer away from the content markets - they even say so at times, saying that they'll create the tools for other people to create content and view it with. AOL on the otherhand has been chasing the content market without really caring much for the software side of things. So long as it works good enough for their subscribers to log on and access content, that's fine.
Besides which - AOL has no operating system. It runs mainly on windows, with much delayed upgrades to get Mac users up to par with Windows users.
So, regardless - users still need Windows, which only Microsoft can supply at whatever charge they'ed like - AOL is mainly a content company with a very small finger in software, where as Microsoft is a software company that dabbles in content - I can not fathom how Microsoft can say that AOL has created true competition for them.
Yes, it is a little scary to think that way over half of the mainstream news outlets will be controlled by AOL Time-Warner, but it's a different argument completely. But so long as they don't "revamp" their software to interfere with users visiting content sites that aren't controlled by them, I am very hard pressed to see the real "consumer harm" that people mention.
NBC, CBS, CNN etc all basically report the same exact news. You've always had to dig deeper to find the "other" news. Since AOL/Time Warner only serves the mainstream, I doubt it will make much difference to us, even in 5 or 10 years, who owns what, because they're all already the same.
I've microwaved a lot of garbage CD's in my day. Never tried a CD-R... Nor have i ever tried more than one at time, because i only do it when i know for sure i never ever want to hear that band again. Anyways... it's fun.... And i'd love to see a stack of 20 in the microwave... it'd probably be reminisent of the Eifel tower on Y2K.
I don't think they really care that much about capturing the video and audio once it leaves the box. The same as how there's not a huge stink about blank cassettes and blank VHSes... There's quality loss. You're not duplicating the media, you're copying it in a "lossy" fashion.
Moreover, people will immediatly know that what they have is not the original and most will recognize that copy isn't of as high a quality as the original.
Contrast that with DVD's and their digitalness, where one of the entire points of digital audio and video is that it doesn't degrade with copies or with time. That point has itself been pushed by the industry, to the point where consumers will know or need very little reminding that a duplicate of a DVD is just as good as the original...
No... They realized that there are so many loopholes (exporting books and scanning them in over seas) that it was pointless to try to contain stong cryptography to just inside the US.
But by my reading, I'm wondering something:
In the blurb about consumer retail products, it says any crypto up to 56 bits, and anything that does key exchange between 512 and 1024 bits.
In the details section (i'm not great with legalese, so bear with me...) it says "multilateraly... up to and including 64 bits...".
Source code can only be exported after review and classification. That would seem to mean that source and libraries and such can only be exported if it complies with the above rules?
Oh... now i'm at the summary:
If you could previously export products with 40 or 56 bit encryption, you can upgrade them to 64 bits, so long as you sign a letter saying that that's all you've done.
You can implement eliptic curve key exchange up to 112 bits.
You can use RSA for key exchange up to 512 bits.
Don't celebrate yet. This barely changes anything, IMO... All it really does is show what the current capabilities of the government are, I think.
It's not that they're trying to hide anything from you. It's just like how word processors encrypt their default spelling dictionaries. That list is their only intellectual property.
Understanding that, they would need to allow for an auxillary list, which would be a list of sites that administrators could explicitly choose to allow or deny.
Seems like an acceptable request and an acceptable solution.
Unless the cordone the computers off into little booths, I'm sure that there's plenty of precedence saying what is and what is not acceptable use.
You're free to rent your porn for a video store. You're free to buy any magazine you'd like. But the government (paid for with my taxes) should not have to pay for computers and internet access for libraries if in turn they are going to be used by people too poor to but their own magazines... \
It's not perfect. And yeah, that's a major mess up. And with the volume of dynamic data out there, it's rather hard to set up a program or database that is 100% accurate.
Maybe someone could hack together an Apache proxy that blocks all data from a set of URL's (like www.hardcoresluts.com and wwww.girlshavingsex.com) as well as block any document that contains another set of words (they're not really worthy of mention here).
Yeah - you'd end up blocking some unwanted sites... but in the end, with enough fine tuning (overrides) you'd have a perfectly usable service... Just have the libraries or whatnot set all their servers to use that proxy, and send problem reports to a specicif email address, so you can add and subtract sites from it's lists, presto! You've got a billion dollar company and me to thank for it...
Just send me a few hundred thousand shares and we'll call it even.
I don't have a problem with public resources like libraries having restricted internet access. If you're dying to look at kiddie porn, regular porn, etc... you can do so from the comfort of your own home.
If you're coming to the library to do research, then unless you just happen to be researching porn or hate groups, you'll probably enjoy the fact that there's not someone on the computer across from you staring at women in all sorts of unnatural positions.
It'll be violating our "free speech" if the government mandates that porn sites are no longer allowed to operate in the US. It's a completely other thing to say it's okay to look at those and other "objectionable" sites in a public place, where kids can be near by.
Just like that whole fiasco in New York with the elephant feces or whatever... Just because it's art doesn't mean the government has to give you a grant.
You seem to miss the point. It is not to mandate incompatitablility. The successful companies would NOT be incompatible with eachother. Rather, they would add features that users asked for, offer different versions at different price points, etc...
To mandate incompatibility would be absurd. Why would it be necessary to mandate incompatiblility, when again, every other platform out there has some form of compatability? Unixes are partially portable... Java exists...
No. You just want to set up multiple companies to that some competition forms in the OS market. If Bill Gates runs one, Steve Balmer another and someone else the third, you'd have real competition. Bill would not have authority over Steve, anymore.
I'm not saying put the browser in the kernel or anything. I'm just saying put the browser on the CD. KDE integrates a browser. Redhat ships Communicator. I haven't yet used Gnome, but i can't imagine that it wouldn't include one. And everyone in the world will at the very least include Mozilla once it ships, and somewhere out there, someone will try to integrate it with Gnome or KDE in some way shape or form.
Microsoft would quickly be at a major disadvantage if they could not ship a browser with the operating system. The deal would need to be that said browser has the standard uninstall feature that almost every other windows app has. No big deal... you want it, you've got it. You don't want it, hit remove, it's all gone...
Um.... that basically punishes the entire computing industry for what Microsoft did. Believe it or not, most costomers DO ask for windows. Why should a manufacturer have to spend the time and resources to train staff to install and support an additional OS, in their customers aren't asking for it?
If their customers are asking, and the company is refusing, then they'll lose their customers.
Mainly what should happen is that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to sign exclusionary deals, give different discounts to different vendors who purchase the same quantity, or join any "market development agreements". That way, if an OEM saw enough requests for BeOS to justify it, they could do so without fear of reprisal.
Requiring manufacturers to create two sets of drivers for devices will simply slow the market down to a crawl. If i use windows, why should i have to wait for an extra 6 months for something, just because the company needs to develop a FreeDOS version of XYZ? And what if the rest of the OS doesn't support the functionality needed..?
As far as I know, OpenBSD doesn't support Quicktime, so should a maker of video capture cards need to reimplement quicktime on that platform before it can ship a product for Windows???
Rethink what you've written and see just how much that would negatively affect the entire industry.
Bill Gates is the largest shareholder. If someone else owned more MSFT stock than him, then they'ed be the world's richest person... I believe he owns around 20 or 22% of it. You can probably find for sure in an SEC filing.
Whatever the DoJ decides to do with Microsoft one thing that they will not be doing is penalizing them. Rather, all the actions that they take are supposed to restore competition rather than simply hurt Microsoft. That's why they can't just say, fine them $20 billion dollars.
About the only thing they could do is decide that Windows is an essential facility or whatever the name is, but even then, the government would have to pay Microsoft for the source...
And lastly, the Judge found that Microsoft competes unfairly and has a monopoly on OPERATING SYSTEMS. Last I looked, Office is not part of the OS... Therefore, I thinks it's highly unlikely that there will be much done in the front of taking IP out of the Apps division...
Office is a HUGE product. There's still tons of justification for them not developing a Linux version, namely, how many people will actually buy it.... A port would take at least a couple years, so if they started now, we'd see it in 2002 or so...
But the only way it would be viable even then is if people within Microsoft felt that Linux would grow a huge amount in that time... I doubt that mindset exists much anywhere within Microsoft. Therefore the justification against developing Apps for Linux would and could continue...
I understood what he said... Maybe you need your coffee?:)
It's Larry Elison's idea. Rather than split them vertically across applications, which would still leave one company with a monopoly on Operating Systems, another with a near monopoly on Office Suites, and a 3rd with an ungodly amount of cash to fund it's failing internet ventures, Elison suggested splitting them horizontally, where we'd end up with several companies distributing Windows and Office in a vie for supremecy.
I think that would be the best scenario. Microsoft and their allies say that this would cause confusion by having many incompatible versions of WIndows and such, but in reality, the incompatible versions will go out of business rather quickly, unless they've introduced something so radical that it actually can not run 16-bit software anymore...
And as for the internet becoming so intertwined, etc... it wasn't this way a few years ago, and Microsofts motives for bundling IE were clearly not for the consumer but rather to squasch Netscape, but these days, web browsers should be included with operating systems. They don't need to be as deeply "integrated" as what MSFT has done, but the reality is that in the future, companies distributing OS'es will need to be able to include technologies with their OS that aren't necessarily parts of the OS themselves...
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No one has really explained why a company such as dell, gateway, or ibm would not want to just roll their own distro? After finally getting an opportunity to get out from under microsofts thumb, why would they rush to get under Redhats? They have developers on staff. They have huge amounts of tech support on staff who would need little retraining ("from now on, use this database if it's a Linux question")...
I think that that's the next wave. Vendors may even say that their distro is based on RHATsfor a while to get the public used to the idea of them being equals, but in the end there'll probably be Dell Linux and IBM Linux etc... some vendors will maintiain the status quo... others will try to differentiate their products with proprietary enhancements and end up incompatible with the rest of the crowd...
That's what i see at least...
In 10 years Redhat Linux 6.0 will be just as viable as Windows 3.1 is today.
I thought Redhat Linux was free for all comers? I mean, anyone can download their distro... Then they can burn it to CD, install it in every computer in their city, and that's completely legit. I swear this is Redhat just trying to pump their own stock price with announcements that are complete FLUFF...
Maybe if they started entering into money making alliances worthy of their $20 billion dollar market cap, i'd be excited... But right now, they seem to be all about looks and very little about substance.
I haven't ever needed to make a bootable CD. That said, i've never burnt anything but ISO format... One disk, readable by Linux, Windows, and the Macintosh with no extra software... And it keeps long names as well (up to the limits of MacOS 8.6, at least)
I just grabbed a copy for myself... Not like I'll probably do anything with it, but it's still nice to know that I can one day rummage through it and other OS projects, if for nothing else, educational value.
On the second note - Does VA build their own motherboards? Even if they did, I can't imagine that they'ed have enough volume to justify building PPC boards. Even with IBM releasing the specs for free. If you want LinuxPPC, go get a Mac.... But then you'll always get 2nd rate support than if you'd opted for an x86 system... I'm saying that, and I'm a Mac fan...
Can you prove they haven't? Nor can I. Or anyone else. You want them to treat you as "innocent until proven guilty" but won't afford the same protection to them? Yeah, Echelon can exist, just because the capability is there for them to snoop us, who's to say that they really do? Maybe they really do just snoop other countries, and don't want them getting strong crypto for that very reason...
But then, all the conspiracy theorists would have to imagine a new threat.
I thought we went over this when we bugged Rob for his code :-)
/., that's the case.
If they're not selling their code, they don't need to release it. They can use it in production environments all they want, and it doesn't really matter. Just so long as they don't sell it. I don't quite get that... I thought the GPL stopped that, but according to
You could try asking them for it. But then they'll just put off release by another week.
I really dislike how Microsoft and their supporters say that this merger puts them in direct competition with Microsoft, and that therefore the anti-trust case is invalid. They said the same thing when AOL bought Netscape... It would seem that anything that AOL does these days invalidates the antitrust trial...
In truth, they're still in very different markets. With a few exceptions (MSNBC, Slate) Microsoft has tried to steer away from the content markets - they even say so at times, saying that they'll create the tools for other people to create content and view it with. AOL on the otherhand has been chasing the content market without really caring much for the software side of things. So long as it works good enough for their subscribers to log on and access content, that's fine.
Besides which - AOL has no operating system. It runs mainly on windows, with much delayed upgrades to get Mac users up to par with Windows users.
So, regardless - users still need Windows, which only Microsoft can supply at whatever charge they'ed like - AOL is mainly a content company with a very small finger in software, where as Microsoft is a software company that dabbles in content - I can not fathom how Microsoft can say that AOL has created true competition for them.
Yes, it is a little scary to think that way over half of the mainstream news outlets will be controlled by AOL Time-Warner, but it's a different argument completely. But so long as they don't "revamp" their software to interfere with users visiting content sites that aren't controlled by them, I am very hard pressed to see the real "consumer harm" that people mention.
NBC, CBS, CNN etc all basically report the same exact news. You've always had to dig deeper to find the "other" news. Since AOL/Time Warner only serves the mainstream, I doubt it will make much difference to us, even in 5 or 10 years, who owns what, because they're all already the same.
I've microwaved a lot of garbage CD's in my day. Never tried a CD-R... Nor have i ever tried more than one at time, because i only do it when i know for sure i never ever want to hear that band again. Anyways... it's fun.... And i'd love to see a stack of 20 in the microwave... it'd probably be reminisent of the Eifel tower on Y2K.
:)
I don't think they really care that much about capturing the video and audio once it leaves the box. The same as how there's not a huge stink about blank cassettes and blank VHSes... There's quality loss. You're not duplicating the media, you're copying it in a "lossy" fashion.
Moreover, people will immediatly know that what they have is not the original and most will recognize that copy isn't of as high a quality as the original.
Contrast that with DVD's and their digitalness, where one of the entire points of digital audio and video is that it doesn't degrade with copies or with time. That point has itself been pushed by the industry, to the point where consumers will know or need very little reminding that a duplicate of a DVD is just as good as the original...
No... They realized that there are so many loopholes (exporting books and scanning them in over seas) that it was pointless to try to contain stong cryptography to just inside the US.
... up to and including 64 bits...".
But by my reading, I'm wondering something:
In the blurb about consumer retail products, it says any crypto up to 56 bits, and anything that does key exchange between 512 and 1024 bits.
In the details section (i'm not great with legalese, so bear with me...) it says "multilateraly
Source code can only be exported after review and classification. That would seem to mean that source and libraries and such can only be exported if it complies with the above rules?
Oh... now i'm at the summary:
If you could previously export products with 40 or 56 bit encryption, you can upgrade them to 64 bits, so long as you sign a letter saying that that's all you've done.
You can implement eliptic curve key exchange up to 112 bits.
You can use RSA for key exchange up to 512 bits.
Don't celebrate yet. This barely changes anything, IMO... All it really does is show what the current capabilities of the government are, I think.
It's not that they're trying to hide anything from you. It's just like how word processors encrypt their default spelling dictionaries. That list is their only intellectual property.
Understanding that, they would need to allow for an auxillary list, which would be a list of sites that administrators could explicitly choose to allow or deny.
Seems like an acceptable request and an acceptable solution.
Unless the cordone the computers off into little booths, I'm sure that there's plenty of precedence saying what is and what is not acceptable use.
You're free to rent your porn for a video store. You're free to buy any magazine you'd like. But the government (paid for with my taxes) should not have to pay for computers and internet access for libraries if in turn they are going to be used by people too poor to but their own magazines... \
Porns a freedom, not a right.
It's not perfect. And yeah, that's a major mess up. And with the volume of dynamic data out there, it's rather hard to set up a program or database that is 100% accurate.
Maybe someone could hack together an Apache proxy that blocks all data from a set of URL's (like www.hardcoresluts.com and wwww.girlshavingsex.com) as well as block any document that contains another set of words (they're not really worthy of mention here).
Yeah - you'd end up blocking some unwanted sites... but in the end, with enough fine tuning (overrides) you'd have a perfectly usable service... Just have the libraries or whatnot set all their servers to use that proxy, and send problem reports to a specicif email address, so you can add and subtract sites from it's lists, presto! You've got a billion dollar company and me to thank for it...
Just send me a few hundred thousand shares and we'll call it even.
I don't have a problem with public resources like libraries having restricted internet access. If you're dying to look at kiddie porn, regular porn, etc... you can do so from the comfort of your own home.
If you're coming to the library to do research, then unless you just happen to be researching porn or hate groups, you'll probably enjoy the fact that there's not someone on the computer across from you staring at women in all sorts of unnatural positions.
It'll be violating our "free speech" if the government mandates that porn sites are no longer allowed to operate in the US. It's a completely other thing to say it's okay to look at those and other "objectionable" sites in a public place, where kids can be near by.
Just like that whole fiasco in New York with the elephant feces or whatever... Just because it's art doesn't mean the government has to give you a grant.
You seem to miss the point. It is not to mandate incompatitablility. The successful companies would NOT be incompatible with eachother. Rather, they would add features that users asked for, offer different versions at different price points, etc...
To mandate incompatibility would be absurd. Why would it be necessary to mandate incompatiblility, when again, every other platform out there has some form of compatability? Unixes are partially portable... Java exists...
No. You just want to set up multiple companies to that some competition forms in the OS market. If Bill Gates runs one, Steve Balmer another and someone else the third, you'd have real competition. Bill would not have authority over Steve, anymore.
Linux has made it this far without anything as extravagent as Codewarrior.
There's still large factions that say that the CLI is superior to the GUI.
There are hundreds of free alternative to Code Warrior.
It seems understandable for a company to doubt how much impact their product will have on a hugely saturated market.
I'm not saying put the browser in the kernel or anything. I'm just saying put the browser on the CD. KDE integrates a browser. Redhat ships Communicator. I haven't yet used Gnome, but i can't imagine that it wouldn't include one. And everyone in the world will at the very least include Mozilla once it ships, and somewhere out there, someone will try to integrate it with Gnome or KDE in some way shape or form.
Microsoft would quickly be at a major disadvantage if they could not ship a browser with the operating system. The deal would need to be that said browser has the standard uninstall feature that almost every other windows app has. No big deal... you want it, you've got it. You don't want it, hit remove, it's all gone...
Um.... that basically punishes the entire computing industry for what Microsoft did. Believe it or not, most costomers DO ask for windows. Why should a manufacturer have to spend the time and resources to train staff to install and support an additional OS, in their customers aren't asking for it?
If their customers are asking, and the company is refusing, then they'll lose their customers.
Mainly what should happen is that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to sign exclusionary deals, give different discounts to different vendors who purchase the same quantity, or join any "market development agreements". That way, if an OEM saw enough requests for BeOS to justify it, they could do so without fear of reprisal.
Requiring manufacturers to create two sets of drivers for devices will simply slow the market down to a crawl. If i use windows, why should i have to wait for an extra 6 months for something, just because the company needs to develop a FreeDOS version of XYZ? And what if the rest of the OS doesn't support the functionality needed..?
As far as I know, OpenBSD doesn't support Quicktime, so should a maker of video capture cards need to reimplement quicktime on that platform before it can ship a product for Windows???
Rethink what you've written and see just how much that would negatively affect the entire industry.
Bill Gates is the largest shareholder. If someone else owned more MSFT stock than him, then they'ed be the world's richest person... I believe he owns around 20 or 22% of it. You can probably find for sure in an SEC filing.
:)
You were right on one count at least...
Whatever the DoJ decides to do with Microsoft one thing that they will not be doing is penalizing them. Rather, all the actions that they take are supposed to restore competition rather than simply hurt Microsoft. That's why they can't just say, fine them $20 billion dollars.
About the only thing they could do is decide that Windows is an essential facility or whatever the name is, but even then, the government would have to pay Microsoft for the source...
And lastly, the Judge found that Microsoft competes unfairly and has a monopoly on OPERATING SYSTEMS. Last I looked, Office is not part of the OS... Therefore, I thinks it's highly unlikely that there will be much done in the front of taking IP out of the Apps division...
But then... IANAL...
Office is a HUGE product. There's still tons of justification for them not developing a Linux version, namely, how many people will actually buy it.... A port would take at least a couple years, so if they started now, we'd see it in 2002 or so...
But the only way it would be viable even then is if people within Microsoft felt that Linux would grow a huge amount in that time... I doubt that mindset exists much anywhere within Microsoft. Therefore the justification against developing Apps for Linux would and could continue...
I understood what he said... Maybe you need your coffee? :)
It's Larry Elison's idea. Rather than split them vertically across applications, which would still leave one company with a monopoly on Operating Systems, another with a near monopoly on Office Suites, and a 3rd with an ungodly amount of cash to fund it's failing internet ventures, Elison suggested splitting them horizontally, where we'd end up with several companies distributing Windows and Office in a vie for supremecy.
I think that would be the best scenario. Microsoft and their allies say that this would cause confusion by having many incompatible versions of WIndows and such, but in reality, the incompatible versions will go out of business rather quickly, unless they've introduced something so radical that it actually can not run 16-bit software anymore...
And as for the internet becoming so intertwined, etc... it wasn't this way a few years ago, and Microsofts motives for bundling IE were clearly not for the consumer but rather to squasch Netscape, but these days, web browsers should be included with operating systems. They don't need to be as deeply "integrated" as what MSFT has done, but the reality is that in the future, companies distributing OS'es will need to be able to include technologies with their OS that aren't necessarily parts of the OS themselves...
The most insightful and clearheaded person on Slashdot is no one other than a Microsoft employee... I have to say I like that a whole lot! :)
The most insightful and clearheaded person is no one other than a Microsoft employee... I have to say I like that a whole lot! :)