You forget some important points why "trusted computing" just can't succeed:
Nobody likes to give up control. While end-users might be stupid enough to give into Win32 platform domination and dependence, even those will revolt when they can no longer pirate mp3s. Even worse are software makers, especially the bulk of software-work which is in-house and not sold. Those will not want to have to get approval from Microsoft to run their own programs. Those will not want to pay Microsoft for certificates. Nobody will want to have Microsoft setting the price of certificates. Even when some software company feels that they could cut down piracy with it, they all know that Microsoft being able to charge whatever they want is much worse than all the piracy in the world.
There are huge costs involved. You yourself say that there will be very long transition periods to "sneak" TPCA into computers without anybody noticing. However, TPCA costs money, the Fritz chip costs money and all the involved licenses/patents/royalties cost money. If customers don't know about it, they won't request it. And there will be motherboards without it, simply because they are cheaper to make and TPCA doesn't add any additional value. To make TPCA obligatory, Microsoft would have to make sure that no significant non-TPCA computers are sold for at least half a decade which is simply something they can't do. Essentially Microsoft is asking hardware vendors to support costs without any kind of payoff. Of course they can do it, they are Microsoft. But they can't prevent vendors slipping through their fingers and they also cannot do it forever. If TPCA isn't taking off fast, vendors will get wary and will drop the Fritz chip in the next, cheaper revisions of their motherboards.
With Linux making big inroads in Europe and Asia, Microsoft won't have that muscle anymore 5 years down the road. In the server-market, it already happened: No major hardware vendor can afford not to support Linux. In 2003, Linux already had some noticable successes: Munich going Linux-only, Thailand already preinstalling Linux on 60% of PC's in the 3rd quarter of 2003, China ordering 200 million (!) Linux PCs to be installed in the next years, Vietnam proclaiming to eliminate Windows altogether and go for Linux, Malaysia investing millions into Linux and the list goes on. This momentum won't slow and soon Linux will reach enough marketshare on the desktop, too, so that hardware and software makers can no longer afford to ignore it. Then TPCA is doomed.
It all comes down to this: Essentially nobody really wants Palladium except Microsoft and the content providers.
In my opinion, all the "I'll sue" Windows-users are just lying to themselves and living in a dream-world.
Now to get you in touch with reality:
No, you will not sue.
No, Bill Gates doesn't give a shit about you.
No, if you don't even have the spine to avoid Microsoft products, you also won't have the spine to sue them. You will just shut up, swallow it just like you swallowed WPA and will say that "you will sue" when (not if) they will do the next step.
No, even if you sued you wouldn't have a chance. With software you have already waived all rights, it essentially is a "take it or leave it" product. No customers ever won against a software maker in sueing for damages. And I'm talking about real damages here, not your laughable electrical bill.
There is only one way to hurt Microsoft and that is stopping using their products. Either you accept that fact and act accordingly or you continue to make empty threats against Microsoft on Slashdot.
How exactly is randomly putting out threats to sue but then not sue "biting off more than they can chew"?
Let's see... IIRC, SCO already threatened Transmeta, RedHat, HP, SGI, Linus Torvalds and now Google. And that's just those that I remember right now. They didn't actually sue anybody except IBM.
The problem is that Mozilla refuses to offer an alternative.
Mozilla had SVG support for years. But not in the default distribution which makes it useless. Let's hope that Mozilla maintainers wake up now and finally put SVG into the default installation as soon as possible.
Right now, the same people who ignored the officially approved SVG will wet their pants and will want Mozilla to immediately support the non-approved and ever-changing "standard" WVG.
The only nice side effect is that we will hopefully get SVG by default into Mozilla, too.
... if only Mozilla would include it in their DEFAULT installation.
While Mozilla is a great piece of work technically, the management can't be described anything other than moronic.
I am a supporter of free software and I also have several webpages.
I'd love to use SVG to display 90 rotated text, I'd also love to tell people that if they use Mozilla, the SVG-version will download a lot faster than the image-based alternative. But I can't, because if it isn't in the default distribution, it is worthless, even if I can get somebody to download the "special build" it will break after every update.
I'd love to recommend Firebird to users. But I can't because no matter how stable it is, a pre 1.0 version is not recommendable.
Another example of stupidity is the removal of MNG. Originally somebody "decided" that the bashers are right and MNG had to be removed to "reduce bloat and download size". It's only a few hundred kilobytes, so this seems strange. Even after the MNG supporters showed that by replacing the animated GIF which shows Mozilla's animation in the top right corner by an MNG variant would save more space than it would cost to support MNG they didn't listen. Even after several coders significantly reduced the size of MNG support, they wouldn't listen. By now it has escalated to a matter of pride and it seems that Mozilla drivers don't want to back down even if it means holding on to the most moronic arguments possible. Voting for this bug won't change much, it's already the most voted bug and no Mozilla maintainer seems to care.
That's why I have given up any hopes of Mozilla spearheading new technology. To do that you have to have some minimum of self-confidence which the Mozilla project lacks.
That's why Apple chose KHTML and not Gecko.
KDE 3.2 will come out in about a month and Konqueror will come with SVG support out of the box. IE will have something similar later. The sad fact is that Mozilla's minority complex is so big that they simply won't incorporate anything that isn't in other browsers in a usable form, so Mozilla users will have to wait for Konqueror to hope for a useful SVG-implementation in default-Mozilla.
There are so many things right in front of the noses of Mozilla maintainers that would make Mozilla a better browser and would introduce killer-features, that no other browsers support, yet they prefer to let those technologies rot unused and wait for other browsers to support it.
Irrational trash-talking about Microsoft. There are plenty of *rational* ways to criticize them, and people should stick to those arguments rather than ranting on and on about the same old tired issues. At some point the Bill Gates and Blue Screen jokes just lose their luster.
Oh yeah,
remember when important members of the community called Windows un-americanic?
Remember when they said is was like a cancer?
Remember when they threatened to sue all end-users without any proof? (And without actually really suing any end users?)
That's a lot worse than anything I've heard from any relevant member of the OSS community. Even RMS whose views seem a little bit extreme to me, has never said anything comparable to what Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or Darl McBride have said.
Sorry, but I think you should get your senses checked, you seem to be blind and deaf on one side.
Re:What will drive Linux adoption
on
Linux in 2004?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually if you look at all the "new" markets that were irrelevant or didn't exist at all 10 years ago, Linux dominates them all:
Webservers (irrelevant in 1993)
Clusters (also irrelevant and not widely used in 1993)
Embedded systems operating systems (only recently the bulk of embedded systems has enough power to run a full blown OS)
That's why Microsoft is so afraid. All new stuff is going the Linux-route while Microsoft is basically stuck without any new revenue sources.
But on established stuff, you are right, drop-in replacements are very successful, probably the best example is Samba which may be already used more often than Windows files servers...
Re:Nah, Education is the Future
on
Linux in 2004?
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· Score: 1
I used KDE/Linux on a Powerbook G3 400MHz with 196MB RAM and it was certainly usable when turning off the eye-candy.
And that was KDE3.0, there are many optimizations till that time, you should really try KDE3.1.4 or even better KDE3.2alpha (despite being an Alpha release it was stable on my installation) they contain lots of speed improvements.
But of course a little more RAM couldn't hurt either... (But KDE does run fine on 400MHz)
Everybody not scanning through all (possibly millions) results of a search is a dumbass because he's not "using the search engine to it's full capabilities"?
I think there's no argument too stupid for MS-apologists to use.
The sad fact is that Microsoft has to lose more than to gain by fixing png and css problems.
If sites begin to use these features more, people with have to upgrade and when they upgrade, there is of course the danger that they move away from IE.
Microsoft is quite happy with the status quo and will do anything to defend it.
Well, it looks like XBox will get an even bigger money-pit than it already is...
Like everything else, XBox depends on Microsofts only 2 profitable products: MS Windows and MS Office. If/When StarOffice and Linux can take away their profits on Servers or worse on desktops, I see a lot of unprofitable projects getting shut down at Microsoft, and XBox is one of them.
Actually no Linux has to fight SCO because so far SCO didn't sue anybody over Linux.
Yes, they did sue IBM, but that's about IBM violating what SCO claims to be their IP, that IBM is supposed to put that IP into Linux is irrelevant for that case.
SCO is just paid to spew FUD, no more, no less. They will never sue anybody about Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
It all comes down to this: Essentially nobody really wants Palladium except Microsoft and the content providers.
Now to get you in touch with reality:
No, you will not sue.
No, Bill Gates doesn't give a shit about you.
No, if you don't even have the spine to avoid Microsoft products, you also won't have the spine to sue them. You will just shut up, swallow it just like you swallowed WPA and will say that "you will sue" when (not if) they will do the next step.
No, even if you sued you wouldn't have a chance. With software you have already waived all rights, it essentially is a "take it or leave it" product. No customers ever won against a software maker in sueing for damages. And I'm talking about real damages here, not your laughable electrical bill.
There is only one way to hurt Microsoft and that is stopping using their products. Either you accept that fact and act accordingly or you continue to make empty threats against Microsoft on Slashdot.
Netcraft says it's 200. Port80 says it's 1.
Wrong. Port80 says it's zero, zilch, nada because they only count the frontpage of Fortune 1000 companies and nothing else.
Errr. Wrong.
There are numerous cases of people who tried to buy such licenses, but SCO refused to sell them (exactly because it would be illegal)
SCO is using Microsoft money to spread FUD. End of story.
How exactly is randomly putting out threats to sue but then not sue "biting off more than they can chew"?
Let's see... IIRC, SCO already threatened Transmeta, RedHat, HP, SGI, Linus Torvalds and now Google. And that's just those that I remember right now. They didn't actually sue anybody except IBM.
Obviously, it isn't.
They are going to sue every major company that uses Linux
No, they won't.
So far they didn't sue anybody for using Linux, they only sued IBM for IP-infringement.
They won't sue anybody for using Linux, but they will continue to threaten to sue.
Well, that's a lot more than Mozilla, which still supports nothing at all in the default version.
So? CSS isn't fully implemented either, even with plain HTML there are some unimplemented things.
They have been burned before by half supporting standards, and it's generally agreed that it's a bad thing.
Where have they been "burned before"?
Mozilla had SVG support for years. But not in the default distribution which makes it useless. Let's hope that Mozilla maintainers wake up now and finally put SVG into the default installation as soon as possible.
Mozilla has SVG support for years. Sadly, Mozilla maintainers don't support it and don't put it into the default distribution.
Right now, the same people who ignored the officially approved SVG will wet their pants and will want Mozilla to immediately support the non-approved and ever-changing "standard" WVG.
The only nice side effect is that we will hopefully get SVG by default into Mozilla, too.
While Mozilla is a great piece of work technically, the management can't be described anything other than moronic.
I am a supporter of free software and I also have several webpages.
That's why I have given up any hopes of Mozilla spearheading new technology. To do that you have to have some minimum of self-confidence which the Mozilla project lacks.
That's why Apple chose KHTML and not Gecko.
KDE 3.2 will come out in about a month and Konqueror will come with SVG support out of the box. IE will have something similar later. The sad fact is that Mozilla's minority complex is so big that they simply won't incorporate anything that isn't in other browsers in a usable form, so Mozilla users will have to wait for Konqueror to hope for a useful SVG-implementation in default-Mozilla.
There are so many things right in front of the noses of Mozilla maintainers that would make Mozilla a better browser and would introduce killer-features, that no other browsers support, yet they prefer to let those technologies rot unused and wait for other browsers to support it.
Oh yeah,
That's a lot worse than anything I've heard from any relevant member of the OSS community. Even RMS whose views seem a little bit extreme to me, has never said anything comparable to what Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or Darl McBride have said.
Sorry, but I think you should get your senses checked, you seem to be blind and deaf on one side.
That's why Microsoft is so afraid. All new stuff is going the Linux-route while Microsoft is basically stuck without any new revenue sources.
But on established stuff, you are right, drop-in replacements are very successful, probably the best example is Samba which may be already used more often than Windows files servers...
And that was KDE3.0, there are many optimizations till that time, you should really try KDE3.1.4 or even better KDE3.2alpha (despite being an Alpha release it was stable on my installation) they contain lots of speed improvements.
But of course a little more RAM couldn't hurt either... (But KDE does run fine on 400MHz)
Actually KDE 3.2 is coming out early next year (2004).
I think there's no argument too stupid for MS-apologists to use.
Well, IIS IS the underdog compared to LAMP. Just look at the various graphs at Netcraft.
They have a tiny light grey "WEB DIRECTORY SITES" label which isn't really telling me anything useful.
Also most people won't go past the first page.
Homer: "Hey, don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
If sites begin to use these features more, people with have to upgrade and when they upgrade, there is of course the danger that they move away from IE.
Microsoft is quite happy with the status quo and will do anything to defend it.
Well, it looks like XBox will get an even bigger money-pit than it already is...
Like everything else, XBox depends on Microsofts only 2 profitable products: MS Windows and MS Office. If/When StarOffice and Linux can take away their profits on Servers or worse on desktops, I see a lot of unprofitable projects getting shut down at Microsoft, and XBox is one of them.
How can they "crush" them?
It works like this:
There is no fight, there is no attack. There is just FUD, nothing more and nothing less.
Yes, they did sue IBM, but that's about IBM violating what SCO claims to be their IP, that IBM is supposed to put that IP into Linux is irrelevant for that case.
SCO is just paid to spew FUD, no more, no less. They will never sue anybody about Linux.