Since many are accusing this of being the United States of Corporate America, one must realize the target of AC's jab, here.
Businesses are getting to be dependent on Linux, more and more. They see the benefits.
Isn't that the point, after all?
But now this little DMCA thing is being surfaced as a possible negative to the business community. So far it's been below their radar screen. The only significant business awareness of the DMCA has been from the proponents on the media side. Here comes a warning shot saying that the DMCA is bad legislation, not only out of a 'principle thing' that/.ers gripe about, but because it's ill specified and poorly written, and thereby has unforseen consequences. Those unforseen consequences can mean bad things to other businesses.
We need allies on this, because as long as it's only a Geek Issue, we're going to get rolled over. IMHO this is a recruiting effort.
In at least way, patents do equal innovation
on
Microsoft's Future
·
· Score: 2
When tracking the sincerity of a corporation, watch the flow of money.
Patents are not free, especially once you start involving corporate lawyers. The mere fact that IBM is getting patents says that they are willing to spend money on them, and therefore that they are a priority.
One of the biggest problems in a big corporation is making measurments. They tend to do well at the things they can effectively measure, and often poorly at the things they can't. Patents are being used as a measure of innovation, and to that extent IBM is shown as valuing innovation.
Your point that patents do not necessarily represent innovation is certainly valid. But can you think of a better measurment that can be implemented across a multinational corportation. Plus, at the very least, there is some linkage between patents and innovation. Even if there are some stupid ones in there, there are good ones, too.
at least that's what the high school chemistry teacher told us. Given the jar of metallic iodine that wasn't carefully controlled, we made a TON of the stuff, though obviously in very small batches. At one point, someone rolled a glass rod down the chem lab bench, with small snapping sounds the whole way. The chem lab also overlooked the stadium, and was used for spotting and shooting game films. Someone noticed the odd snapping sounds when walking across the floor.
That looked like an 'incautious' amount of the stuff piled on those filter papers.
Incidentally, as long as the stuff is wet, you can do anything you want with it. It doesn't get touchy until dry.
For further reading, R.A.Heinlein used the stuff in "Farnham's Freehold".
I wonder what the shape of the turn-on curve is like?
Modern short-channel MOSFETs are an ungainly compromise between being on and off. We can manipulate the threshold voltage, but so far we can't change the shape of the turn-on (essentially the gain) curve very well. The practical upshot is that modern transistors are perched somewhere between leaking too much DC current and not being strong enough to drive signals with the strength we need.
At the moment, there is no such thing as low-power, high-performance deep submicron logic. It's the nature of the transistor, not the clock speed.
You hit the nail on the head, with they're being wrong to call this "POP3". But then again, the things named by IETF kind of look like trademarks, but I don't believe that they are.
So what's to stop Microsoft from re-defining POP3, SMTP, and all those other T and F LAs to suit their own needs. Has IETF registered them as trademarks? Who can care with enough $$$ to stop Microsoft from pulling this mess, even if it were illegal, and is it?
CDs list for $17.00.
Cassettes list for about $10.00.
CD media is one piece, no replication time because it's stamped. CDs are SOOOOO cheap that they're the AOL distribution method of choice.
Cassettes have between a half dozen and a dozen pieces that need assembly, and even though they're thermally dup'ed much faster than the 1 7/8 ips they're played at, there is still a duplication time. As soon as possible, software makers got out of the cassette business.
So cheap cost = expensive price, so much for this being anything but a marketing exercise. The cost appears to have NOTHING to do with the price.
CDs came out over a decade ago at about the same price, when they were a novelty. At the time, one figures these are computer-stuff, and prices will come down as technology gets better. They haven't.
Moreover, we have many recording labels producing CDs, but there doesn't appear to be ANY significant competitive pressure. Just about any other industry would get strung up for 'collusion' or something like that, in this situation.
Napster wasn't just people cheating because the technology became available. IMHO we all know we're getting ripped off. That doesn't make Napster right, but also IMHO this puts the current situation into a more Prohibition-like setting. The current situation allowed/required by the law is STUPID and WRONG.
IMHO whenever crime reaches the epidemic proportions of Napster (or Prohibition, or drugs) something needs to be done besides simply enforcing and stiffening the law. In the case of Prohibition, it was repealed. IMHO in the case of drugs, the collateral damage of drug financing and attempts at enforcement are worse than simply controlling drugs like alcohol and cigarettes. IMHO for Napster, serious examination of pricing and collusion are necessary, combined with a review of copyright provisions. (My kids are Beatles fans, and last I know Michael Jackson gets the revenue. How does this encourage the Beatles to produce more music this many years later?)
I also remember that either that story or another had an interesting tax dodge. The Brits were not scheduled to leave last, but the expedition had been there nearly 6 months. So they asked to swap return schedules with the American expedition so they could go over the 6 month line, and not have to pay taxes on their pay while on the moon.
I don't know how US tax code would handle it then or now, but I do know they include prorating for time spent outside the US earning money. I've also heard that any money you might save on taxes would be spent in accountant's fees proving it and filing the right forms.
>Hmmm. Either we have a fundamental disagreement, or I'm failing badly to communicate.
No, I'm being obtuse.
I agree with what you say about terrorist-might-bes not caring about IP issues - until the first (maybe second or third) time we go after them with a club.
The test case for this is in AIDS drugs, and in countries that want to break patents because they've got a REAL problem. Brazil plans to give every HIV-positive person the triple-treatment cocktail, but I assume there's no way they can afford this at U&P rates. This situation appears to be lives vs royalty dollars, and paints in a bad light anyone who defends the latter position. Again, I put a caveat in because it costs serious money to develop drugs, but that gets lost in the shuffle, and I have no idea what part it plays in the profit picture.
Compared to this, the geek IP issues we normally talk about are chump change, I agree. It's an annoyance, and mostly to the middle-class moderates, not likely to become terrorists. But right now in Afghanistan we're treading a delicate line between being effective against radical Muslims while not offending moderates. In this and future situations, if we have middle-class moderates somewhat annoyed with us, it may make it more difficult to pursue other, not necessarily related objectives. As I said earlier, another brick in the wall.
As for protected media, I hope you're right. But the SSSCA and the like are getting serious bandwidth right now. Hopefully it's geek panic, but I'd rather not count on that. The SSSCA is far more intrusive and onerous than the protected-only media and players I posit, but it's getting serious discussion. Using the same logic, one could easily make the point (erroneously, but easily, and with enough $$$, convincingly) that, "the only unprotected media is pirate media".
I'm sure the hardware makers would rather offer more versatile products for negligible cost, as you say. But don't forget that the protected media is licensed, and what *wonders* Microsoft has learned to do with licensing. Imagine a license that says, "Licensing this media decryption algorithm excludes capability of playing unencrypted media on the same system." A DVD player that can't play unencrypted media is an annoyance to a few leading-edge home/college movie types, but a DVD player that can't play encrypted media is DEAD in the market.
As for CD-R and DVD-R, I think CD-R took them a bit by surprise. They spent their money and developed their skills, and it wasn't soon enough to stop DVD-R. But I'm sure they'd love to, and I fear the money-raising needs of our legislators.
I don't think copy protection itself will cause violence, I said that. But it *will* be one more piece of the puzzle. IMHO AIDS drugs and Terminator Seeds are much more egregious (sp?) cases of IP strangleholds.
Nor do digital rights restrictions prevent creation or playing of unprotected media. What I fear here is if we get to a point where all *cheap* players and media is of the restricted sort. Compare to the way the WinModem is pushing the real modem to a higher price point, only more extreme. Real modems just never were that expensive to begin with, so as WinModems took over the low-price point, real modem prices didn't rise that badly.
But in the case of digital media players, that's an expensive chunk of silicon, and economy of scale is the only way to make it cheap. If economy of scale is only applied to players that play only protected media, then unprotected media gets locked out because of cost. It's not a matter of rights, it's a matter of economics and mass production.
But I'm thinking more of other aspects of IP law, and consider the W3C thing, copyright, etc, to be 'another brick in the wall.' Look at the current furor over patented AIDS drugs, Terminator Seeds, and the like. In these cases it's patent revenue and profits vs lives, in the simplified case. In the more complex case, we have to realize that drug development is expensive, and is currently funded through profits. No profits, no new drugs, in today's model.
But back more directly to W3C, DMCA, etc. The French in particular have been most vocally fearful of the loss of their culture to creeping English. Others are, if not there today, certainly not far behind. In this light, the real danger of our IP-anal "standards" is the potential to shrivel ready availablilty of non-protected hardware. Currently DVD players can play non-CSS media. That may not forever be the case.
Imagine a world where all widely distributed digital media is protected, and the only mass-produced players play only that protected media. Then the MPAA and RIAA become the digital gate, either neglecting other cultures because of insufficient (local) revenue or active neglect because they see them as competition, however slight.
The real issue isn't a bunch of geeks wanting to play DVDs on Linux. It's other parts of the world wanting to preserve their local cultures.
A friend chided me for my inaccurate picture of 'fat, greedy, American' noting that this company is German, that company is Japanese, another British, another French, etc. But like it or not, we're dealing with people too poor to understand these subtleties - they've never read a prospectus. America is the standard-bearer, and the target. Accuracy and sophistication are not necessary, only perception.
So right now business is in a small-scale rebellion against the Microsoft XP-mandate.
When the Navy mandates Win2k, how much guff do they get from Microsoft about not migrating to XP? Somehow I suspect that the Navy Win2k mandate means exactly that - Win2k. Not XP. Not YP or XQ or YQ, or whatever comes next.
Events over the past month seem to accord the US a sort of most-hated nation status in the world. While this does not justify taking of innocent lives, and those doing the hating ignores many of the good things that the US does, any solutions that do not address the hatred and its causes will have problems over the long term.
From what I can see, globalization of IP looks like a means to allow the haves of the world to 'tax' the have-nots. This situation is not good for long-term peace or stability in the world. It will only increase the hatred.
No matter what the Supremes may say, SSSCA and W3C RAND have the essential effect of cementing Microsoft's monopoly and removing the only effective competition the marketplace has produced in the past 5 years.
Many parts of the Third World are attempting to join the information age. Typically they are strapped for resources, and so far the ability to get on the internet with minimum barriers to entry has been key for them. The availability of free software has been essential. Not just free for use, but free for them to enter the development process, both to meet local needs and to build their technical base.
Doesn't patent encumbrance of W3C standards constitute another barrier to entry for poorer nations?
Even if we are willing to give them all copies of some proprietary web browser, aren't we still standing in the way of their developing their own technical expertise, because they won't have access to and use of the source code.
Doesn't it come across just a little like (Pardon the inflammatory language, but it exaggerates the argument appropriately.) fat Western capitalist pigs trying to keep the Third World down?
Before wishing for a pocket Cray, according to: http://www.dg.com/about/html/cray-1.html the Cray-1 was a 160 MFlop machine.
I'm not sure how to equate that to X86 floating point, or even what the Cray-1 clock speed was, and I realize that it was a quarter century ago. But I think that modern garden-variety PCs are in or above the Cray-1 performance realm.
Arthur C. Clarke beat us all to the punch...
on
NASA to Go Commercial?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I forget which book it was, and I'm sure someone will be happy to chip in and correct me on the exact quote, too...
"The 'C's and 'L's came out great. The 'O's and 'A's had a few problems."
This was a line from the story which described a science package that shot sodium dust out of a small can off the surface of the moon. It was supposed to rise off of the nighttime surface facing the earth, into the sunlight. Someone had inserted a mask into the can, so when the sodium dust hit the sun, it was a logo rather than simply a circle.
I just installed a new 40GB 60GXP one week ago, today. Fingers crossed.
My 3.2GB Deskstar has been flawless. For just over two years it's been spinning away nearly 24x7 on my 'old box'. I back up/etc on the desktop system, but maybe that's not such a good idea, any more.
MC: Bomb #20, please return to the bomb bay.
SP: But I received the drop order.
MC: The drop order was in error. Please return to the bomb bay.
SP: OK, but this is the last time...
...
Captain: Talk to the bomb... Teach it phenomenology...
...
SP: In the beginning there was darkness, and me...
>No. The documentation has been around for a while (years). You can see here: http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=text [wotsit.org] that there are
>references to the Word 6 format as well.
I think part of the problem here is that I see Word6 and Word8 (Word97) formats documented, but we're having to cope with Word2000 and soon WordXP. At any rate, I've downloade both Word8 zip files, and want to at least take a look at them. I should proabably grab the Word6 zip files too, to see the nature/need of the changes.
On the humorous side, think of what trying to keep cryogenic fuel in wing tanks would mean to getting de-iced at the gate. I guess this may really be a serious one, because even with all the sprayed on foam, the shuttle ET still accumulates ice that falls off at lift-off.
As for the size, that may not be as big a problem as it seems. I remember hearing some things about the way lift scales with increasing size. As long as you can keep the weight/density down, sheer size isn't that big a problem, and may even be beneficial for lift. (though perhaps not for top speed) The stuff I've heard about the super-jumbo airbus may tend to substantiate this. While they are talking about adding more passengers, they're also talking about adding more spacious amenities for non-cattle^H^H^H^H^Hoach passengers. That would square with a less dense loaded plane.
Just last week, I reinstalled to put RedHat 7.1 on a new hard drive. On the old install, I had Star Office 5.2, mostly for the kids to do homework, but have thrown away the download file.
So now to get access to their old data, I have to re-fetch *something*, either 5.2 or the 6.0 beta. Most people will not be in this precise situation, but I'm sure many will want to know about the interoperability and quality of the beta.
So before I get started on either/any big download, should I just skip 5.2 and go for 6.0?
Because aside from sucking, Microsoft understands that their market grip is in proprietary file formats and protocols.
I believe it was back in the Halloween documents that they talked about "complex or subtle protocols and file formats" as a means for holding/gaining market share. You simply have to understand the goals in architecting and designing a protocol/format and parser. For most of us, it's simplicity and robustness. For Microsoft, add in the difficulty of reverse-engineering as perhaps more important than robustness, and clearly more important than simplicity. Lest you think that this is just a weapon against lil'old Linux users, don't forget that it's also a prime tool to keep their own users on the upgrade wheel. How often has it been said that the first MS Office user in an office eventually "forces" the whole office to upgrade, simply by passing around files in the latest default format.
The flip side of this is that the most robust things are generally also simple. IMHO it is inevitable that MS has had to trade off robustness in order to bring these difficult-to-reverse-engineer protocols and formats to market. In other words, it's deliberate foisting of second-rate goods counter to the customers' best interests.
They're trying to hang onto the role, but not the job. You're exactly right, they want to get rid of the inefficient part, keep the price right where it has been to sustain physical media, and keep the difference as profits.
Unfortunately eBooks have a good role model in the music industry. Where else can you take something (the CD) that is SOOOO cheap that AOL uses it, and for that matter it comes as a freebie in Cheerios, and charge more for it than cassettes, which actually have moving parts and non-negligible duplication costs. I presume we've all read "Courtney Love Does the Math".
Slashdot Mirror
And here I thought "The Road to Cairo" must have been an old road flick starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour.
Is it the unavailablity of the original that makes the Cairo launch star Bill Gates, Sting, and Madonna?
Since many are accusing this of being the United States of Corporate America, one must realize the target of AC's jab, here.
/.ers gripe about, but because it's ill specified and poorly written, and thereby has unforseen consequences. Those unforseen consequences can mean bad things to other businesses.
Businesses are getting to be dependent on Linux, more and more. They see the benefits.
Isn't that the point, after all?
But now this little DMCA thing is being surfaced as a possible negative to the business community. So far it's been below their radar screen. The only significant business awareness of the DMCA has been from the proponents on the media side. Here comes a warning shot saying that the DMCA is bad legislation, not only out of a 'principle thing' that
We need allies on this, because as long as it's only a Geek Issue, we're going to get rolled over. IMHO this is a recruiting effort.
When tracking the sincerity of a corporation, watch the flow of money.
Patents are not free, especially once you start involving corporate lawyers. The mere fact that IBM is getting patents says that they are willing to spend money on them, and therefore that they are a priority.
One of the biggest problems in a big corporation is making measurments. They tend to do well at the things they can effectively measure, and often poorly at the things they can't. Patents are being used as a measure of innovation, and to that extent IBM is shown as valuing innovation.
Your point that patents do not necessarily represent innovation is certainly valid. But can you think of a better measurment that can be implemented across a multinational corportation. Plus, at the very least, there is some linkage between patents and innovation. Even if there are some stupid ones in there, there are good ones, too.
at least that's what the high school chemistry teacher told us. Given the jar of metallic iodine that wasn't carefully controlled, we made a TON of the stuff, though obviously in very small batches. At one point, someone rolled a glass rod down the chem lab bench, with small snapping sounds the whole way. The chem lab also overlooked the stadium, and was used for spotting and shooting game films. Someone noticed the odd snapping sounds when walking across the floor.
That looked like an 'incautious' amount of the stuff piled on those filter papers.
Incidentally, as long as the stuff is wet, you can do anything you want with it. It doesn't get touchy until dry.
For further reading, R.A.Heinlein used the stuff in "Farnham's Freehold".
I wonder what the shape of the turn-on curve is like?
Modern short-channel MOSFETs are an ungainly compromise between being on and off. We can manipulate the threshold voltage, but so far we can't change the shape of the turn-on (essentially the gain) curve very well. The practical upshot is that modern transistors are perched somewhere between leaking too much DC current and not being strong enough to drive signals with the strength we need.
At the moment, there is no such thing as low-power, high-performance deep submicron logic. It's the nature of the transistor, not the clock speed.
You hit the nail on the head, with they're being wrong to call this "POP3". But then again, the things named by IETF kind of look like trademarks, but I don't believe that they are.
So what's to stop Microsoft from re-defining POP3, SMTP, and all those other T and F LAs to suit their own needs. Has IETF registered them as trademarks? Who can care with enough $$$ to stop Microsoft from pulling this mess, even if it were illegal, and is it?
CDs list for $17.00.
Cassettes list for about $10.00.
CD media is one piece, no replication time because it's stamped. CDs are SOOOOO cheap that they're the AOL distribution method of choice.
Cassettes have between a half dozen and a dozen pieces that need assembly, and even though they're thermally dup'ed much faster than the 1 7/8 ips they're played at, there is still a duplication time. As soon as possible, software makers got out of the cassette business.
So cheap cost = expensive price, so much for this being anything but a marketing exercise. The cost appears to have NOTHING to do with the price.
CDs came out over a decade ago at about the same price, when they were a novelty. At the time, one figures these are computer-stuff, and prices will come down as technology gets better. They haven't.
Moreover, we have many recording labels producing CDs, but there doesn't appear to be ANY significant competitive pressure. Just about any other industry would get strung up for 'collusion' or something like that, in this situation.
Napster wasn't just people cheating because the technology became available. IMHO we all know we're getting ripped off. That doesn't make Napster right, but also IMHO this puts the current situation into a more Prohibition-like setting. The current situation allowed/required by the law is STUPID and WRONG.
IMHO whenever crime reaches the epidemic proportions of Napster (or Prohibition, or drugs) something needs to be done besides simply enforcing and stiffening the law. In the case of Prohibition, it was repealed. IMHO in the case of drugs, the collateral damage of drug financing and attempts at enforcement are worse than simply controlling drugs like alcohol and cigarettes. IMHO for Napster, serious examination of pricing and collusion are necessary, combined with a review of copyright provisions. (My kids are Beatles fans, and last I know Michael Jackson gets the revenue. How does this encourage the Beatles to produce more music this many years later?)
I also remember that either that story or another had an interesting tax dodge. The Brits were not scheduled to leave last, but the expedition had been there nearly 6 months. So they asked to swap return schedules with the American expedition so they could go over the 6 month line, and not have to pay taxes on their pay while on the moon.
I don't know how US tax code would handle it then or now, but I do know they include prorating for time spent outside the US earning money. I've also heard that any money you might save on taxes would be spent in accountant's fees proving it and filing the right forms.
>Hmmm. Either we have a fundamental disagreement, or I'm failing badly to communicate.
No, I'm being obtuse.
I agree with what you say about terrorist-might-bes not caring about IP issues - until the first (maybe second or third) time we go after them with a club.
The test case for this is in AIDS drugs, and in countries that want to break patents because they've got a REAL problem. Brazil plans to give every HIV-positive person the triple-treatment cocktail, but I assume there's no way they can afford this at U&P rates. This situation appears to be lives vs royalty dollars, and paints in a bad light anyone who defends the latter position. Again, I put a caveat in because it costs serious money to develop drugs, but that gets lost in the shuffle, and I have no idea what part it plays in the profit picture.
Compared to this, the geek IP issues we normally talk about are chump change, I agree. It's an annoyance, and mostly to the middle-class moderates, not likely to become terrorists. But right now in Afghanistan we're treading a delicate line between being effective against radical Muslims while not offending moderates. In this and future situations, if we have middle-class moderates somewhat annoyed with us, it may make it more difficult to pursue other, not necessarily related objectives. As I said earlier, another brick in the wall.
As for protected media, I hope you're right. But the SSSCA and the like are getting serious bandwidth right now. Hopefully it's geek panic, but I'd rather not count on that. The SSSCA is far more intrusive and onerous than the protected-only media and players I posit, but it's getting serious discussion. Using the same logic, one could easily make the point (erroneously, but easily, and with enough $$$, convincingly) that, "the only unprotected media is pirate media".
I'm sure the hardware makers would rather offer more versatile products for negligible cost, as you say. But don't forget that the protected media is licensed, and what *wonders* Microsoft has learned to do with licensing. Imagine a license that says, "Licensing this media decryption algorithm excludes capability of playing unencrypted media on the same system." A DVD player that can't play unencrypted media is an annoyance to a few leading-edge home/college movie types, but a DVD player that can't play encrypted media is DEAD in the market.
As for CD-R and DVD-R, I think CD-R took them a bit by surprise. They spent their money and developed their skills, and it wasn't soon enough to stop DVD-R. But I'm sure they'd love to, and I fear the money-raising needs of our legislators.
I don't think copy protection itself will cause violence, I said that. But it *will* be one more piece of the puzzle. IMHO AIDS drugs and Terminator Seeds are much more egregious (sp?) cases of IP strangleholds.
Nor do digital rights restrictions prevent creation or playing of unprotected media. What I fear here is if we get to a point where all *cheap* players and media is of the restricted sort. Compare to the way the WinModem is pushing the real modem to a higher price point, only more extreme. Real modems just never were that expensive to begin with, so as WinModems took over the low-price point, real modem prices didn't rise that badly.
But in the case of digital media players, that's an expensive chunk of silicon, and economy of scale is the only way to make it cheap. If economy of scale is only applied to players that play only protected media, then unprotected media gets locked out because of cost. It's not a matter of rights, it's a matter of economics and mass production.
Obviously a silly scenario, I agree.
But I'm thinking more of other aspects of IP law, and consider the W3C thing, copyright, etc, to be 'another brick in the wall.' Look at the current furor over patented AIDS drugs, Terminator Seeds, and the like. In these cases it's patent revenue and profits vs lives, in the simplified case. In the more complex case, we have to realize that drug development is expensive, and is currently funded through profits. No profits, no new drugs, in today's model.
But back more directly to W3C, DMCA, etc. The French in particular have been most vocally fearful of the loss of their culture to creeping English. Others are, if not there today, certainly not far behind. In this light, the real danger of our IP-anal "standards" is the potential to shrivel ready availablilty of non-protected hardware. Currently DVD players can play non-CSS media. That may not forever be the case.
Imagine a world where all widely distributed digital media is protected, and the only mass-produced players play only that protected media. Then the MPAA and RIAA become the digital gate, either neglecting other cultures because of insufficient (local) revenue or active neglect because they see them as competition, however slight.
The real issue isn't a bunch of geeks wanting to play DVDs on Linux. It's other parts of the world wanting to preserve their local cultures.
A friend chided me for my inaccurate picture of 'fat, greedy, American' noting that this company is German, that company is Japanese, another British, another French, etc. But like it or not, we're dealing with people too poor to understand these subtleties - they've never read a prospectus. America is the standard-bearer, and the target. Accuracy and sophistication are not necessary, only perception.
So right now business is in a small-scale rebellion against the Microsoft XP-mandate.
When the Navy mandates Win2k, how much guff do they get from Microsoft about not migrating to XP? Somehow I suspect that the Navy Win2k mandate means exactly that - Win2k. Not XP. Not YP or XQ or YQ, or whatever comes next.
Events over the past month seem to accord the US a sort of most-hated nation status in the world. While this does not justify taking of innocent lives, and those doing the hating ignores many of the good things that the US does, any solutions that do not address the hatred and its causes will have problems over the long term.
From what I can see, globalization of IP looks like a means to allow the haves of the world to 'tax' the have-nots. This situation is not good for long-term peace or stability in the world. It will only increase the hatred.
No matter what the Supremes may say, SSSCA and W3C RAND have the essential effect of cementing Microsoft's monopoly and removing the only effective competition the marketplace has produced in the past 5 years.
Many parts of the Third World are attempting to join the information age. Typically they are strapped for resources, and so far the ability to get on the internet with minimum barriers to entry has been key for them. The availability of free software has been essential. Not just free for use, but free for them to enter the development process, both to meet local needs and to build their technical base.
Doesn't patent encumbrance of W3C standards constitute another barrier to entry for poorer nations?
Even if we are willing to give them all copies of some proprietary web browser, aren't we still standing in the way of their developing their own technical expertise, because they won't have access to and use of the source code.
Doesn't it come across just a little like (Pardon the inflammatory language, but it exaggerates the argument appropriately.) fat Western capitalist pigs trying to keep the Third World down?
Before wishing for a pocket Cray, according to: http://www.dg.com/about/html/cray-1.html the Cray-1 was a 160 MFlop machine.
I'm not sure how to equate that to X86 floating point, or even what the Cray-1 clock speed was, and I realize that it was a quarter century ago. But I think that modern garden-variety PCs are in or above the Cray-1 performance realm.
I forget which book it was, and I'm sure someone will be happy to chip in and correct me on the exact quote, too...
"The 'C's and 'L's came out great. The 'O's and 'A's had a few problems."
This was a line from the story which described a science package that shot sodium dust out of a small can off the surface of the moon. It was supposed to rise off of the nighttime surface facing the earth, into the sunlight. Someone had inserted a mask into the can, so when the sodium dust hit the sun, it was a logo rather than simply a circle.
I just installed a new 40GB 60GXP one week ago, today. Fingers crossed.
/etc on the desktop system, but maybe that's not such a good idea, any more.
My 3.2GB Deskstar has been flawless. For just over two years it's been spinning away nearly 24x7 on my 'old box'. I back up
MC: Bomb #20, please return to the bomb bay.
SP: But I received the drop order.
MC: The drop order was in error. Please return to the bomb bay.
SP: OK, but this is the last time...
...
Captain: Talk to the bomb... Teach it phenomenology...
...
SP: In the beginning there was darkness, and me...
(Rusty memories of AI hardware in "Dark Star")
>No. The documentation has been around for a while (years). You can see here: http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=text [wotsit.org] that there are
>references to the Word 6 format as well.
I think part of the problem here is that I see Word6 and Word8 (Word97) formats documented, but we're having to cope with Word2000 and soon WordXP. At any rate, I've downloade both Word8 zip files, and want to at least take a look at them. I should proabably grab the Word6 zip files too, to see the nature/need of the changes.
On the humorous side, think of what trying to keep cryogenic fuel in wing tanks would mean to getting de-iced at the gate. I guess this may really be a serious one, because even with all the sprayed on foam, the shuttle ET still accumulates ice that falls off at lift-off.
As for the size, that may not be as big a problem as it seems. I remember hearing some things about the way lift scales with increasing size. As long as you can keep the weight/density down, sheer size isn't that big a problem, and may even be beneficial for lift. (though perhaps not for top speed) The stuff I've heard about the super-jumbo airbus may tend to substantiate this. While they are talking about adding more passengers, they're also talking about adding more spacious amenities for non-cattle^H^H^H^H^Hoach passengers. That would square with a less dense loaded plane.
If it's so well documented, I don't quite understand why good .doc filters are so hard to come by. Is it that:
1: The documentation is late, so of course filters for old versions can be done, but new versions are not publicly documented, yet.
2: The documentation has some sort of licensing provisions that are unacceptable, therefore is effectively useless for building a competitive product.
3: The only good programmers work for Microsoft. So even with documentation, nobody else can make import/export filters that work well.
Just last week, I reinstalled to put RedHat 7.1 on a new hard drive. On the old install, I had Star Office 5.2, mostly for the kids to do homework, but have thrown away the download file.
So now to get access to their old data, I have to re-fetch *something*, either 5.2 or the 6.0 beta. Most people will not be in this precise situation, but I'm sure many will want to know about the interoperability and quality of the beta.
So before I get started on either/any big download, should I just skip 5.2 and go for 6.0?
Because aside from sucking, Microsoft understands that their market grip is in proprietary file formats and protocols.
I believe it was back in the Halloween documents that they talked about "complex or subtle protocols and file formats" as a means for holding/gaining market share. You simply have to understand the goals in architecting and designing a protocol/format and parser. For most of us, it's simplicity and robustness. For Microsoft, add in the difficulty of reverse-engineering as perhaps more important than robustness, and clearly more important than simplicity. Lest you think that this is just a weapon against lil'old Linux users, don't forget that it's also a prime tool to keep their own users on the upgrade wheel. How often has it been said that the first MS Office user in an office eventually "forces" the whole office to upgrade, simply by passing around files in the latest default format.
The flip side of this is that the most robust things are generally also simple. IMHO it is inevitable that MS has had to trade off robustness in order to bring these difficult-to-reverse-engineer protocols and formats to market. In other words, it's deliberate foisting of second-rate goods counter to the customers' best interests.
Up until this Fall, the market has LOVED it, too.
But that's really my point...
They're trying to hang onto the role, but not the job. You're exactly right, they want to get rid of the inefficient part, keep the price right where it has been to sustain physical media, and keep the difference as profits.
Unfortunately eBooks have a good role model in the music industry. Where else can you take something (the CD) that is SOOOO cheap that AOL uses it, and for that matter it comes as a freebie in Cheerios, and charge more for it than cassettes, which actually have moving parts and non-negligible duplication costs. I presume we've all read "Courtney Love Does the Math".