IMHO, something akin to the straylight run from Neuromancer would fit beautifully into a Matrix sequel.
Take omnipotent Neo and jack him in, and while he's giving the AI hell from the inside out, the others are trying to cripple it from the outside in..
We certainly didn't see much of the 'real' world in Matrix0, so it seems like a logical place to go. Especially now that Neo can't be touched in cyberspace - the AI (methinks) would try to shut him down IRL.
That's for sequel #2, for #1 it should probably be a precursor to what's already been out. Run a "AI goes naughty" movie - maybe with the first 'The One' biting the big one at the end. Then re-run the original Matrix, so no one forgets what happened, and the Wachowski make a few more bucks. And finally run the sequel #2 where the AI finally 'sees the light' or gets decompiled, or whatever.
It all starts with a 5"x7" LCD touchscreen, head unit and basic car audio functionality. To this we add CD changers, graphic equalizers, surround sound controls, all the other typical goodies...
The fun starts when you shell out the $2500 for the Navigation package that is coupled with a GPS system and onboard CD-ROM containing the street level map of your part of the country (a'la DeLorme).
Then you subscribe to their Guide service, which gives your car the the functionality of OnStar (or whatever) where you can get directions or reference to something enroute from a live person, declare a medical or automotive emergency to a central dispatcher, etc.
Then you add security, (LoJack with teeth) where if your car is stolen, the Alpine people can trace it, kill the ignition and direct the police to the it. All the while carrying on a conversation with the thief.
Then you add the ability to view DVD movies. I'm sure in the near future videophones and on-line access will be part of the package.
And the nicest thing is that after you have that pricy screen module, the other services plug in as you want them. Saw it at a JoDi's. Sharp, but too rich for my blood. But, if I could plug a PC into it, I just might be persuaded.
After checking your car's Web page, the person on the other end of the line informs you that... your car is slashdotted. Damn! Don'cha hate it when that happens?
And what about those times when you're passing a semi, and the garbage collection algorithm kicks in, eh?
a) Convince 260 million sheep that they're being sheparded by someone.
b) Explain to them how this is done.
c) Explain to them why it's bad - so as to not look like a fringe malcontent.
d) Get them to, in a concerted effort, feed poison to the InfoHounds.
e) accomplish all of the above without the powers that be taking note and counteracting your efforts
Maybe a march on Washington? Nah, that'd just be labeled as nostalgic... The nation is being babysat and placated by the national media, driven by focus groups.. It's hard to tear somone away from their TV set.
I know, let's put libertarian comments in the source code we release open source. But that'd give M$ the edge in the legal arena... Hmmm..
At least not until a member of a minority group can get stopped, harrassed and beaten for driving through an afluent neighborhood... Oh, wait!
Well, at least not until Faderal, State and Municipal workers are forced to forefeit their liberty by making union membership a mandatory condition of their employment contract... Oh, wait!
Well, certainly not until politicians stop saying and doing what is right, and start saying and doing that which will keep them in power... How you like them Big Apples Hillary? Now wait a cotton picking minute here!!
At least we still take responsibility for our actions, and face up to the consequences of our choices... [Blame Canada! Blame Canada!]
Let's also add the Stop&Shop discount card data, and a credit card statement digest to that DB. That way we'll be able to harrass each other for buying Coke over Pepsi, and having bought that Durango in a state with lower taxes.
Just a thought - sorry - didn't think it'd be dangerous.
Microkernels are a great way to do things. I've used/developed for QNX in a real-time environment, and I was very impressed.
But, the thing to remember is that small size comes at the cost of functionality and performance. After reading your link and some of the ones from there on, I'm under the impression that beyond a bootable POSIX, browser and web server, there's not much there on that floppy. And I noticed that it uses a two stage boot process to get going. Step one bootstraps a decompressor, and step two loads the decompressed system into memory. That OS, off the floppy, is probably on the order of 4MB+...
The QNX installation I worked with included a full OS (complete with those bells and whistles like grep, awk and vi), the full Photon windowing system (not just the GUI support for the browser) the developer support for TCP/IP, and Photon, and a nuts-to-the-wall C/C++ compiler from Watcom.
The install was about 100MB+, and still wouldn't run Quake.:) It's nice to have a 45K mukernel, but it is more important to have the code for the whole system efficient and fast. Even if the mukernel is half a meg, it must be fast before anything else - except where size trully matters, like on a satellite.:)
It may be true, but it certainly can't be running an NT compatible Win32 system. The NT microkernel is but a tiny pary of the NT kernel. The microkernel is responsible for thread scheduling, multiprocessor sync, interrupt handling and little else. The mukernel needs the other kernel mode services (large) of NT to even begin to provide a Win32 system.
This sounds a lot like saying that Linux is capable of running a web server, X windows, Netscape, Emacs, yadda-yadda, and it can fit on a floppy too. Note, not at the same time, but it can. The floppy sized piece is a small part of the whole that can do wonderful things. I'm sure that the Trumpet people rely on other kernel mode services to provide a system that can run anything at all.
To their credit though, the Trumpet people couldn't take functionality OUT of the mukernel to reduce it's size to ~100K, so that size is a result of tweaks. But then again, we don't know how large that functionally comparable piece of M$-NT is per their distribution of it.
I know that this is mostly a 'me too' type of reply, but Tweety Fish has made an excellent point.
We all remember the stink that went up after Farmer and Venema (sp?) released SATAN. (COPS before that)
Anyone out there remember Asmodeus? Any sysadmins here ever use a rootkit on their boxen to see what it did, and what to watch for? Without port scanners there wouldn't be firewalls, and without sniffers there wouldn't be encryption.
I know tfish is looking even farther than the benefits of reacting to a security threat. And a good thing too. Something like BO, designed to have such a low activity signature as to be undetectable by a casual user, is a huge accomplishment for a Windows product.
There are benefits for network admin tools, from having the BO code available. And if M$ doesn't learn, at least the rest of us will.
So if I substitute FDA approved meat processing plants in place of hospitals in my model...
That brings it closer to the example in the article, and I think that my angle still tracks. If the (real) CDC taints the fields with new diseases each spring, to check for cattle resistance to the concept of disease rather than a particular one, then how can that be dealt with by the packing plant? They don't know what to fight. And we all know that a computer can only be made truly secure by making it useless. People are the problem, bad design/coding just makes it easier for the bad apple.
The point I was trying to make is that CDC is exploiting newer holes each time. I agree that this is of benefit. It's nice to have someone do your debugging for you (if you're the user or even M$ itself). And if M$ fails to close the hole after it's exposed then poo-poo on them. We have choices - too bad more people don't realize that.
I do, however, take exception to the CDC making the exploit tool available to the prepubescents on AOL. My experience with hackers has been that the good ones, the ones that know what they're doing, don't go around handing guns to children. They'll document it, publicize the weakness, perhaps even provide logic to close the hole; but with their experience comes a sense of responsibility.
Making a skeleton key and leaving it in the key-copy machine is irresponsible.
If someone were infectin cattle with e. coli bacteria, they would be introducing a problem that did not exist before hand. Back Orifice exploits problems that already exist.
I don't really agree.
If I leave my home unlocked at night, is that a security problem? No, it's only a problem if someone chooses to exploit my (arguable) carelesness. Same with NT.
I wouldn't put a "this house is unlocked" sign on my lawn for the same reason that M$ doesn't publicize their careless design/implementation. The probability of exploitation skyrockets.
The CDC put a lot of effort into BO. Just as distributed.net put a lot of effort into showing that RSA ain't all that secure either. M$ didn't just leave the system wide open. It took someone with savvy and time to write a tool to take advantage of a loose hinge on a basement window. Now the CDC is giving every hooligan in the neighborhood that tool. Now M$ needs to fix the hinge. Next time, the CDC will climb up on the porch roof, and jimmie the bathroom window with a credit card..
A more apropos analogy would be that of the CDC (Ctr for Disease Ctrl) periodically releasing new and mutant strains of diseases into municipal drinking water to make sure that major hospitals are making their patients immune to illness in general, rather than innoculating them against many specific strains of many specific diseases.
All that the Clan of the Deceased Cattle is demonstrating - however effectively - is that M$ doesn't make the best mousetrap. But then who does?
Tagging comets doesn't get rid of the problem of getting squished by an untagged one. I'm sure that the cost of 'catch and release' on the astronomical scale would be better applied to a concerted and systematic observation and early detection system, or even a tactical nuke base on the moon.:) If the threat of nuclear retribution was enough of a deterent to make the US and USSR play nice, I'm sure it would work on an iceberg.:)
In the previous 'full frontal assault on Apache' article, the current top posting (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/06/30/1310 254&cid=26) makes some excellent points. One being that MS can try and squash Apache, as it is not a corp...
Makes me wonder if this maneuver, then, is not intended to secure some legal protection against preditory behavior by M$...
Anyone familiar enough with legalize to lend some creedence to this?
Just because the Internet is not a Catholics only club does not mean that the Catholic users of it can not have a patron saint for it.
St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers. I do not hear travelers of non-Catholic faiths decrying this - or worse yet, refusing to travel to avoid the accidental labeling as Catholics by proxy. Most non-Catholics simply do not care.
As a recovering Catholic, I am encouraged to see the Church trying to look forward (albeit through ancient rose-colored glasses) rather than ignorantly overlooking the importance of the net or labeling it a fad or wose still - the vehicle of Satan.
Also, let's all take joy in the fact that Jerry Falwell has not discovered push technology.:)
That new Micros~1 help system. You know, the one with 30fps, truecolor video clips and CD quality SurroundSound renderings of a Gerraud (sp) shaded, texture mapped digital assistant.
Remember back in the days when a harddisk was a commodity/expensive option? My XT had two 20MB drives - I was hot sh!t. I ran WP off of a floppy and was quite content.
What's the size of a full install of MS-Word2k?? 100MB? Giv'em ample resources, and the kids in Redmond will run out of them.
Several years ago, Bruce Sterling wrote a great cyberpunk novel titled _Heavy_Weather_. The book was about the near future weather effect of human industrialization. He described a new dust bowl, F-5 tornados being the norm and not the exception, etc. He had the 'flying cow' before Twister was even a glimmer in Spielberg's eye. The protagonists in the book were a group of storm chasers.
Anyway, the point of this note: In the book, Sterling extended the definition of 'hacking' to encompass that which a person did well and for the sake of doing alone. The leader of the Storm Troupers was a Ph.D. in meteorology (methinks) and 'hacked weather', his estranged brother - a politician/public relations type - 'hacked society'... A person is a hacker of that in which they are a self-made expert (in relative terms of course).
Sterling's definition of hacking seems to really suit the Slashdotters well. We have here people who hack code, hack photography, hack carburators. We have people who hack people (i.e. social engineering) hack genes, hack quantum physics...
I hope this note doesn't get lost in the shuffle, because, IMO, Sterling's definition is one we can be proud of.
How to rebuild a carburator
on
35mm Handbook
·
· Score: 2
How to rebuild a carburator would be welcome on/., as far as I'm concerned.
There is much more to news for nerds than computer-industry news.
Photography, much like music, has a common root with hackerdom. It's about making art out of a medium. It's about patterns and creating something beautifully unconventional, using conventional tools.
Including articles like this one on/. is great! It serves to broaden perspectives of people who appreciate the exercise. It just might scratch someone's itch.
Yes, I read the release differently. What the release doesn't say is more important than what it does say.
Inprise has just gotten a HUGE cash infustion from M$. It would be very foolish of Inprise to do something against the best interests of a 10% stakeholder who has also just paid 100mil to settle patent and legal issues.
Inprise will shift focus to pursuits that more immediately benefit it's benefactor.
Even though this was not STATED in the press release, it's implicit in the nature of the arrangement. I give you money therefore you have to be nice to me - it's as old as time.
What the press release DID say what that any speculation about Inprise performing well in the future were just that - speculatory. This might mean that M$ just might hamstring Inprise to make it less of a competitor.
The deal is a payoff. "Here's 5 bucks kid, don't bother me."
This is the next logical step for M$. Regardless of how we all feel about them, this is good strategy on their part. If they can't infiltrate the technology, they'll buy a significant/controlling stake in the other players.
This way, if the industry doesn't buy into the Microsoft method, Microsoft buys into the industry method.
I'm sure there are more 'strategic partnerships' like this on the horizon. Look for M$ to enter into such a partnership with a major PC vendor in the near future.
Generation of people?? It's hard enough to get a proper psychological study done over that length of time. For technology that's only been around that long to begin with, it'll be damn near impossible. Sounds to me like a publicity stunt designed to make the techno-behemoths appear sociologically minded.
Now, if they're talking a generation of chips, that's much more plausible. 18 months of non-usage is sure to have some serious implications on the Klamath.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I call him mini-Bill.
He'd still be a biter! Ha!
"Die Scott (McNeally)!" Haha!
- Ahem. Sorry. Shag flashback.
IMHO, something akin to the straylight run from Neuromancer would fit beautifully into a Matrix sequel.
Take omnipotent Neo and jack him in, and while he's giving the AI hell from the inside out, the others are trying to cripple it from the outside in..
We certainly didn't see much of the 'real' world in Matrix0, so it seems like a logical place to go. Especially now that Neo can't be touched in cyberspace - the AI (methinks) would try to shut him down IRL.
That's for sequel #2, for #1 it should probably be a precursor to what's already been out. Run a "AI goes naughty" movie - maybe with the first 'The One' biting the big one at the end. Then re-run the original Matrix, so no one forgets what happened, and the Wachowski make a few more bucks. And finally run the sequel #2 where the AI finally 'sees the light' or gets decompiled, or whatever.
It all starts with a 5"x7" LCD touchscreen, head unit and basic car audio functionality.
To this we add CD changers, graphic equalizers, surround sound controls, all the other typical goodies...
The fun starts when you shell out the $2500 for the Navigation package that is coupled with a GPS system and onboard CD-ROM containing the street level map of your part of the country (a'la DeLorme).
Then you subscribe to their Guide service, which gives your car the the functionality of OnStar (or whatever) where you can get directions or reference to something enroute from a live person, declare a medical or automotive emergency to a central dispatcher, etc.
Then you add security, (LoJack with teeth) where if your car is stolen, the Alpine people can trace it, kill the ignition and direct the police to the it. All the while carrying on a conversation with the thief.
Then you add the ability to view DVD movies. I'm sure in the near future videophones and on-line access will be part of the package.
And the nicest thing is that after you have that pricy screen module, the other services plug in as you want them. Saw it at a JoDi's. Sharp, but too rich for my blood. But, if I could plug a PC into it, I just might be persuaded.
After checking your car's Web page, the person on the other end of the line informs you that... your car is slashdotted. Damn! Don'cha hate it when that happens?
And what about those times when you're passing a semi, and the garbage collection algorithm kicks in, eh?
Agreed on the approach, but now how do you...
a) Convince 260 million sheep that they're being sheparded by someone.
b) Explain to them how this is done.
c) Explain to them why it's bad - so as to not look like a fringe malcontent.
d) Get them to, in a concerted effort, feed poison to the InfoHounds.
e) accomplish all of the above without the powers that be taking note and counteracting your efforts
Maybe a march on Washington? Nah, that'd just be labeled as nostalgic... The nation is being babysat and placated by the national media, driven by focus groups.. It's hard to tear somone away from their TV set.
I know, let's put libertarian comments in the source code we release open source. But that'd give M$ the edge in the legal arena... Hmmm..
Probably not ever will the US be a facist state.
At least not until a member of a minority group can get stopped, harrassed and beaten for driving through an afluent neighborhood... Oh, wait!
Well, at least not until Faderal, State and Municipal workers are forced to forefeit their liberty by making union membership a mandatory condition of their employment contract... Oh, wait!
Well, certainly not until politicians stop saying and doing what is right, and start saying and doing that which will keep them in power... How you like them Big Apples Hillary? Now wait a cotton picking minute here!!
At least we still take responsibility for our actions, and face up to the consequences of our choices... [Blame Canada! Blame Canada!]
Let's also add the Stop&Shop discount card data, and a credit card statement digest to that DB. That way we'll be able to harrass each other for buying Coke over Pepsi, and having bought that Durango in a state with lower taxes.
Just a thought - sorry - didn't think it'd be dangerous.
Microkernels are a great way to do things.
:)
I've used/developed for QNX in a real-time environment, and I was very impressed.
But, the thing to remember is that small size comes at the cost of functionality and performance. After reading your link and some of the ones from there on, I'm under the impression that beyond a bootable POSIX, browser and web server, there's not much there on that floppy. And I noticed that it uses a two stage boot process to get going. Step one bootstraps a decompressor, and step two loads the decompressed system into memory. That OS, off the floppy, is probably on the order of 4MB+...
The QNX installation I worked with included a full OS (complete with those bells and whistles like grep, awk and vi), the full Photon windowing system (not just the GUI support for the browser) the developer support for TCP/IP, and Photon, and a nuts-to-the-wall C/C++ compiler from Watcom.
The install was about 100MB+, and still wouldn't run Quake.:) It's nice to have a 45K mukernel, but it is more important to have the code for the whole system efficient and fast. Even if the mukernel is half a meg, it must be fast before anything else - except where size trully matters, like on a satellite.
My God Jim! They're dead!
50 sounds like a large number. Does the CDC know there is an outbreak of neuromorphosis? What are they doing about it??
Why are these engineers all going there? Is there a cure or vaccine we've not been told about? Maybe there's a neuromorphosis treatment center there..
Anyway, it sounds serious. And you read it here first folks!!
Oh, wait... Neuromorphic.. nevermind.
It may be true, but it certainly can't be running an NT compatible Win32 system. The NT microkernel is but a tiny pary of the NT kernel. The microkernel is responsible for thread scheduling, multiprocessor sync, interrupt handling and little else. The mukernel needs the other kernel mode services (large) of NT to even begin to provide a Win32 system.
This sounds a lot like saying that Linux is capable of running a web server, X windows, Netscape, Emacs, yadda-yadda, and it can fit on a floppy too. Note, not at the same time, but it can. The floppy sized piece is a small part of the whole that can do wonderful things. I'm sure that the Trumpet people rely on other kernel mode services to provide a system that can run anything at all.
To their credit though, the Trumpet people couldn't take functionality OUT of the mukernel to reduce it's size to ~100K, so that size is a result of tweaks. But then again, we don't know how large that functionally comparable piece of M$-NT is per their distribution of it.
I know that this is mostly a 'me too' type of reply, but Tweety Fish has made an excellent point.
We all remember the stink that went up after Farmer and Venema (sp?) released SATAN. (COPS before that)
Anyone out there remember Asmodeus?
Any sysadmins here ever use a rootkit on their boxen to see what it did, and what to watch for? Without port scanners there wouldn't be firewalls, and without sniffers there wouldn't be encryption.
I know tfish is looking even farther than the benefits of reacting to a security threat. And a good thing too. Something like BO, designed to have such a low activity signature as to be undetectable by a casual user, is a huge accomplishment for a Windows product.
There are benefits for network admin tools, from having the BO code available. And if M$ doesn't learn, at least the rest of us will.
So if I substitute FDA approved meat processing plants in place of hospitals in my model...
That brings it closer to the example in the article, and I think that my angle still tracks.
If the (real) CDC taints the fields with new diseases each spring, to check for cattle resistance to the concept of disease rather than a particular one, then how can that be dealt with by the packing plant? They don't know what to fight. And we all know that a computer can only be made truly secure by making it useless. People are the problem, bad design/coding just makes it easier for the bad apple.
The point I was trying to make is that CDC is exploiting newer holes each time. I agree that this is of benefit. It's nice to have someone do your debugging for you (if you're the user or even M$ itself). And if M$ fails to close the hole after it's exposed then poo-poo on them. We have choices - too bad more people don't realize that.
I do, however, take exception to the CDC making the exploit tool available to the prepubescents on AOL. My experience with hackers has been that the good ones, the ones that know what they're doing, don't go around handing guns to children. They'll document it, publicize the weakness, perhaps even provide logic to close the hole; but with their experience comes a sense of responsibility.
Making a skeleton key and leaving it in the key-copy machine is irresponsible.
If someone were infectin cattle with e. coli bacteria, they would be introducing a problem that did not exist before hand. Back Orifice exploits problems that already exist.
I don't really agree.
If I leave my home unlocked at night, is that a security problem? No, it's only a problem if someone chooses to exploit my (arguable) carelesness. Same with NT.
I wouldn't put a "this house is unlocked" sign on my lawn for the same reason that M$ doesn't publicize their careless design/implementation. The probability of exploitation skyrockets.
The CDC put a lot of effort into BO. Just as distributed.net put a lot of effort into showing that RSA ain't all that secure either. M$ didn't just leave the system wide open. It took someone with savvy and time to write a tool to take advantage of a loose hinge on a basement window. Now the CDC is giving every hooligan in the neighborhood that tool. Now M$ needs to fix the hinge. Next time, the CDC will climb up on the porch roof, and jimmie the bathroom window with a credit card..
Cat and mouse.
A more apropos analogy would be that of the CDC (Ctr for Disease Ctrl) periodically releasing new and mutant strains of diseases into municipal drinking water to make sure that major hospitals are making their patients immune to illness in general, rather than innoculating them against many specific strains of many specific diseases.
All that the Clan of the Deceased Cattle is demonstrating - however effectively - is that M$ doesn't make the best mousetrap. But then who does?
Umm,
:) If the threat of nuclear retribution was enough of a deterent to make the US and USSR play nice, I'm sure it would work on an iceberg. :)
Tagging comets doesn't get rid of the problem of getting squished by an untagged one. I'm sure that the cost of 'catch and release' on the astronomical scale would be better applied to a concerted and systematic observation and early detection system, or even a tactical nuke base on the moon.
In the previous 'full frontal assault on Apache' article, the current top posting (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/06/30/1310 254&cid=26) makes some excellent points. One being that MS can try and squash Apache, as it is not a corp...
Makes me wonder if this maneuver, then, is not intended to secure some legal protection against preditory behavior by M$...
Anyone familiar enough with legalize to lend some creedence to this?
...is the latest rumour. Little Ricky will set aside his NYPD Blue badge to whoop some Sith and get it on with the comely queen.
May the force be with him.
I opt for the latter.
:)
Just because the Internet is not a Catholics only club does not mean that the Catholic users of it can not have a patron saint for it.
St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers. I do not hear travelers of non-Catholic faiths decrying this - or worse yet, refusing to travel to avoid the accidental labeling as Catholics by proxy. Most non-Catholics simply do not care.
As a recovering Catholic, I am encouraged to see the Church trying to look forward (albeit through ancient rose-colored glasses) rather than ignorantly overlooking the importance of the net or labeling it a fad or wose still - the vehicle of Satan.
Also, let's all take joy in the fact that Jerry Falwell has not discovered push technology.
Kibo??
And for that matter, Legba?
Though I suppose Isidore is appropriate for his accomplishments. Glad to see the Vatican is more techno-savvy than the extreme right-wing.
That new Micros~1 help system.
You know, the one with 30fps, truecolor video clips and CD quality SurroundSound renderings of a Gerraud (sp) shaded, texture mapped digital assistant.
Remember back in the days when a harddisk was a commodity/expensive option? My XT had two 20MB drives - I was hot sh!t. I ran WP off of a floppy and was quite content.
What's the size of a full install of MS-Word2k?? 100MB? Giv'em ample resources, and the kids in Redmond will run out of them.
No info on carbs, but...
Several years ago, Bruce Sterling wrote a great cyberpunk novel titled _Heavy_Weather_. The book was about the near future weather effect of human industrialization. He described a new dust bowl, F-5 tornados being the norm and not the exception, etc. He had the 'flying cow' before Twister was even a glimmer in Spielberg's eye. The protagonists in the book were a group of storm chasers.
Anyway, the point of this note: In the book, Sterling extended the definition of 'hacking' to encompass that which a person did well and for the sake of doing alone. The leader of the Storm Troupers was a Ph.D. in meteorology (methinks) and 'hacked weather', his estranged brother - a politician/public relations type - 'hacked society'... A person is a hacker of that in which they are a self-made expert (in relative terms of course).
Sterling's definition of hacking seems to really suit the Slashdotters well. We have here people who hack code, hack photography, hack carburators. We have people who hack people (i.e. social engineering) hack genes, hack quantum physics...
I hope this note doesn't get lost in the shuffle, because, IMO, Sterling's definition is one we can be proud of.
How to rebuild a carburator would be welcome on /., as far as I'm concerned.
/. is great!
There is much more to news for nerds than computer-industry news.
Photography, much like music, has a common root with hackerdom. It's about making art out of a medium. It's about patterns and creating something beautifully unconventional, using conventional tools.
Including articles like this one on
It serves to broaden perspectives of people who appreciate the exercise. It just might scratch someone's itch.
For the sheep, there is ZDNN.com.
Yes, I read the release differently.
What the release doesn't say is more important than what it does say.
Inprise has just gotten a HUGE cash infustion from M$. It would be very foolish of Inprise to do something against the best interests of a 10% stakeholder who has also just paid 100mil to settle patent and legal issues.
Inprise will shift focus to pursuits that more immediately benefit it's benefactor.
Even though this was not STATED in the press release, it's implicit in the nature of the arrangement. I give you money therefore you have to be nice to me - it's as old as time.
What the press release DID say what that any speculation about Inprise performing well in the future were just that - speculatory. This might mean that M$ just might hamstring Inprise to make it less of a competitor.
The deal is a payoff. "Here's 5 bucks kid, don't bother me."
This is the next logical step for M$. Regardless of how we all feel about them, this is good strategy on their part. If they can't infiltrate the technology, they'll buy a significant/controlling stake in the other players.
This way, if the industry doesn't buy into the Microsoft method, Microsoft buys into the industry method.
I'm sure there are more 'strategic partnerships' like this on the horizon. Look for M$ to enter into such a partnership with a major PC vendor in the near future.
Generation of people??
:)
It's hard enough to get a proper psychological study done over that length of time. For technology that's only been around that long to begin with, it'll be damn near impossible. Sounds to me like a publicity stunt designed to make the techno-behemoths appear sociologically minded.
Now, if they're talking a generation of chips, that's much more plausible. 18 months of non-usage is sure to have some serious implications on the Klamath.