Don't companies who manufacture controllers for the system need Microsoft's permission to do so? I would guess that they asked MS for the technical specifications of the controller's interface (they wouldn't want their controller to anything worse than the original) and are paying a nominal sum to sell products. I doubt that these companies had to reverse engineer the Xbox controller in order to sell their product, but I welcome, nay, I invite anyone to prove me wrong.
No, if it did, they would have used Windows. The point is that they want to be able to use the best option for the job, and that includes the speed with which they can set up the system properly.
I know, I tried it for a while, right after switching. It is a very poor offering, and it lacks all of the sophistication that Opera's mouse gestures enjoyed.
For quite a while I used Opera 6, and I loved it. It was fast, and its tabbed browsing was fantastic. The mouse gestures were an unbelievable leap in the speed of web browsing. But I started to get a little ticked off that it blocked all popups, because I liked getting them when I clicked a little javascript button. In order to get these little windows, I had to dig through the extensive preferences menu and temporarily turn on popup windows. It soon began to get tiresome.
Then Mozilla 1.0 came out. I downloaded it, and I've been using it ever since. Mozilla could use some of the things that Opera has, like mouse gestures, but it is more stable (Opera had the habit of crashing when I had more than a dozen windows open) and at least as fast. That's right, Mozilla's rendering engine is at least as fast as Opera's "fastest on earth." Not only that, but it rendered many pages more accurately. With the release of 1.0, Mozilla is a very mature offering, and it makes Opera seem a little less professional, despite the hefty price tag.
Unless the new engine is considerably faster than Gecko, I for one will be sticking to Mozilla. Good luck to the Opera guys though.
I agree. I think they made the correct decision in choosing Linux, because they obviously didn't have too much trouble getting it to work very well for their purposes. They surely do have many experts in house, which helps, and that should factor in their decision. If their experts had been better at Windows, the decision might have been just a little bit more difficult.
The point is that IBM's results, and their decision based on those results, should not be grounds for people to claim that Linux is 15 times more reliable than Windows in all cases. That is not what the article says, and that's just not true.
If they got Linux working very well very quickly, it is the best choice for that application, regardless of whether or not it is actually the best OS for the job. The same would be true if the positions had been reversed. Big companies need to make unbiased decisions based on performance, not stereotypes and superstitions.
If MS had stood for 3 months and Linux had gone down after 6 days, Slashdot would be making a whole different noise. They would be saying that the guys at IBM did something wrong, and that if they'd changed such and such a setting, they could have gotten better reliability out of the Linux system. You're right, there is no *best* system configuration: there are only very good ones for a certain situation. Conversely, there is no *worst* system configuration: there are only very bad ones for a certain situation. It may well have been the case that the Linux system was set up very well to handle the load that IBM needed it to perform, whereas Windows had not been configured to handle said load, and was thus a very bad configuration for that situation.
What he was saying is that had IBM set up Windows properly, they could have gotten much better reliability than 6-7 days. In order for that much of a difference to occur, they had to have made a mistake.
Do you have any evidence that MS is actually using your code (or any other GPL'd code, for that matter)? A lot of people accuse them of it, but there seems to be very little evidence of it. And I mean evidence that they are actually using your code, not just your idea. It is legal for them to reverse engineer your functions, as long as the people actually writing their code have not looked at your code.
# Third - What the government produces, all competitors share equally. What microsoft produces, it keeps to itself.
If everyone were really allowed to use it equally, the government should be required to use something more along the lines of the BSD license, rather than the GPL, because Microsoft simply can't use code that's under the GPL (they'd have to release all their code), but they can use source that's under the BSD license (TCP/IP...). If the NSA produces a linux distro that's under the GPL, they are not allowing all competitors to share equally. If they released it under the BSD license, they would.
That's a good point, but I don't think OpenGL is even written for the Xbox. If Carmack wanted to make his game in OpenGL, he might also have to implement GL on the Xbox hardware, which, as far as I know, has not even been tried.
Does anyone else think this might be at least a little annoying? I mean, it would slow me down a lot to have to assign one hand to using the mouse at all time. I often leave the mouse to type or enter strings of commands, and I wouldn't want to have a wireless mouse to use, especially if I can't even expect it to be on the desk. Keyboard shortcuts are great, but this wireless/deskless mouse seems like it would make it hard to use them.
There are few better ways to get angrily flamed than pointing out the fact that you attend (or used to attend) MIT. A lot of people here wish they'd gotten in. Please disregard the imbicilic posts above.
What would happen to you if it was discovered that you were all of a sudden legally blind? Would your employer fire you? Is that legal? I say you fake the test to make it seem like you can barely see, and get the doctor to diagnose it as a work-related injury (sitting in front of a screen all day is bad for your eyes). Then you could sue your employer for making you blind. Or something.
Ignoring for the moment that I don't know what a 'babershop' is, and assuming that what was meant was 'barbershop,' what is a 'hip barbershop?' Is it, by any chance, a place at which one has his/her hip hair shorn? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't have a very significant problem with hair on my hips...
If there really were aliens on earth, UFOs circling the solar system, etc., you'd be guaranteed that somebody, somewhere who wasn't hushed up by "the government" would have reported it on the 'net.
If that did show up on the net, posted by the "one person that wasn't hushed up by the government," who would believe it? Would you believe it? Or would you dismiss it as some bizarre conspiracy theory?
I'm just asking, because it seems rather important to the issue at hand.
What did you discover that is this important? Did you get a couple of weeks of supercomputer time somewhere and calculate the actual meaning of life, the universe, and everything? Are you worried about revealing to us the information because it isn't 42?
At least for the geek community, that could be the single most crushing realization in history. Except possibly the discovery that Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds are really long lost twins separated at birth. That could be pretty heart wrenching.
You're right, this is a trial run for Palladium. An MS-only hardware platform designed to only run software authorized by Billy G. But, as you say, it's only a test. They are not only testing the hardware platform and setting up the manufacturing process and distribution machine, but they're also testing the hardware security. Each time someone breaks down one little barrier on the road to getting Linux to run, the boys down at Microsoft learn a little bit more about how to keep people from doing that. With every little step that the Xbox-Linux project is making, the odds of putting Linux (or anything else) on the Xbox 2 diminish.
Any R&D done now will be meaningless when the real thing comes along, because anything that we learn will also be learned by MS. They'll know our capabilities, and they will build the machine to make everything we did with the Xbox impossible on the Xbox 2.
Where does Microsoft go if Open Source software ultimately wins out and makes the operating system a no-cost commodity just like the web browser? Long ago, the web browser could only be had for a fee, and MS commoditized it by making it free, because they still had other products to sell. These other products were ultimately more important and more expensive, so for them it was a good choice. Linux and its open source brethren could do the exact same thing to the operating system, and Microsoft really doesn't have anything else that is more expensive or more important than their OS. Office uses Windows function calls that aren't available to anyone else, and if they wanted to port it to Linux, they would be forced to reveal a considerable amount of their precious intellectual property that they seem so convinced should be secret.
Because of this, Microsoft would be rather reluctant to port their Office software to a platform like Linux. But this hurts them more than it hurts anyone else. Programs like OpenOffice and StarOffice are maturing, and are approaching the professional quality of the incumbent MS Office. And, in the case of OpenOffice, it is free to use and the source is available to modify. OpenOffice will make the office suite a free commodity, just as Linux will make the operating system a free commodity, just as Internet Explorer made the web browser a free commodity (for the masses).
Once Microsoft's main products have been made free commodities, what has been left for Microsoft? Do they continue trying to sell expensive bloatware that has been commoditized by superior products? Do they seek legislation to protect their monopoly from the same government that is failing to punish them for said monopoly? Or do they go the way of IBM, go quiet for a few years, and then come back as a support company? In the recent past they have been doing the first option, but it appears that time is running out on that. They are now, evidently, attempting to do the second option. This is foolish, however, because this is America, land of free markets, and the people really won't take well to being forced to purchase anything. Ultimately, and probably in the relatively near future, Microsoft will be forced to move over to the support side of the business. They will not go out of business, but they will never again see the infinite billions they currently enjoy.
I don't want to make that bet at all, even though I am a betting man. That's probably because if the MPAA had its way, any person who buys less than 5 DVDs a month would be arrested and fined.
Directors: This is censorship and it is morally, ethically, and legally wrong! Which is why we will not allow you to publish your works. Editors: Isn't that censorship? Wouldn't that also be morally and ethically wrong? Directors: Well, that's different. It's censorship if you're allowed to publish an edited version of our movie, and not censorship if you are forcibly unable to publish said edited version. Don't you even know the definition of censorship? Editors: Do you?
censorship n.
1. The act, process, or practice of censoring. 2. The office or authority of a Roman censor. 3. Psychology. Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.
tr.v. censored, censoring, censors
To examine and expurgate.
the industry won't allow its movies to be broadcast because they don't want viewers to record 'perfect copies' of movies.
Well they already have a measure in place to prevent this in the analog world that would work just fine when everything goes digital. The version of the movie that they release to the TV stations is of very poor quality; it is downsampled so as to seem fuzzy and crappy. Not only that, but the good swearwords are covered up and the blood is cut out. These are by no means 'perfect copies' of the movies.
Or at the very least, get a black mark on his permanent record and make it much harder for him to get into a good college/university or get a good job.
Interviewer: Have you ever been convicted of a major crime? Jon: Actually yes. Interviewer: startled Oh? For what, may I ask? Jon: Well, um, remember DeCSS? Well, I wrote it. Interviewer: Wait a minute... Jon Johansen? Well, I suppose there's no question about your skills...
Since it's such a high profile case, it probably won't negatively affect his employment opportunities.
Slashdot Mirror
and I would drive at hours when there would be nobody on the roads.
Oh, you mean when it's dark? Yup, +1 Fucking Nuts.
Don't companies who manufacture controllers for the system need Microsoft's permission to do so? I would guess that they asked MS for the technical specifications of the controller's interface (they wouldn't want their controller to anything worse than the original) and are paying a nominal sum to sell products. I doubt that these companies had to reverse engineer the Xbox controller in order to sell their product, but I welcome, nay, I invite anyone to prove me wrong.
Anyway, if it did, it would have been fixed.
No, if it did, they would have used Windows. The point is that they want to be able to use the best option for the job, and that includes the speed with which they can set up the system properly.
I know, I tried it for a while, right after switching. It is a very poor offering, and it lacks all of the sophistication that Opera's mouse gestures enjoyed.
For quite a while I used Opera 6, and I loved it. It was fast, and its tabbed browsing was fantastic. The mouse gestures were an unbelievable leap in the speed of web browsing. But I started to get a little ticked off that it blocked all popups, because I liked getting them when I clicked a little javascript button. In order to get these little windows, I had to dig through the extensive preferences menu and temporarily turn on popup windows. It soon began to get tiresome.
Then Mozilla 1.0 came out. I downloaded it, and I've been using it ever since. Mozilla could use some of the things that Opera has, like mouse gestures, but it is more stable (Opera had the habit of crashing when I had more than a dozen windows open) and at least as fast. That's right, Mozilla's rendering engine is at least as fast as Opera's "fastest on earth." Not only that, but it rendered many pages more accurately. With the release of 1.0, Mozilla is a very mature offering, and it makes Opera seem a little less professional, despite the hefty price tag.
Unless the new engine is considerably faster than Gecko, I for one will be sticking to Mozilla. Good luck to the Opera guys though.
I agree. I think they made the correct decision in choosing Linux, because they obviously didn't have too much trouble getting it to work very well for their purposes. They surely do have many experts in house, which helps, and that should factor in their decision. If their experts had been better at Windows, the decision might have been just a little bit more difficult.
The point is that IBM's results, and their decision based on those results, should not be grounds for people to claim that Linux is 15 times more reliable than Windows in all cases. That is not what the article says, and that's just not true.
If they got Linux working very well very quickly, it is the best choice for that application, regardless of whether or not it is actually the best OS for the job. The same would be true if the positions had been reversed. Big companies need to make unbiased decisions based on performance, not stereotypes and superstitions.
If MS had stood for 3 months and Linux had gone down after 6 days, Slashdot would be making a whole different noise. They would be saying that the guys at IBM did something wrong, and that if they'd changed such and such a setting, they could have gotten better reliability out of the Linux system. You're right, there is no *best* system configuration: there are only very good ones for a certain situation. Conversely, there is no *worst* system configuration: there are only very bad ones for a certain situation. It may well have been the case that the Linux system was set up very well to handle the load that IBM needed it to perform, whereas Windows had not been configured to handle said load, and was thus a very bad configuration for that situation.
What he was saying is that had IBM set up Windows properly, they could have gotten much better reliability than 6-7 days. In order for that much of a difference to occur, they had to have made a mistake.
Do you have any evidence that MS is actually using your code (or any other GPL'd code, for that matter)? A lot of people accuse them of it, but there seems to be very little evidence of it. And I mean evidence that they are actually using your code, not just your idea. It is legal for them to reverse engineer your functions, as long as the people actually writing their code have not looked at your code.
Evidence would be nice.
Everybody tries to use "American" so they'll seem more "patriotic." Since that day, it works, but it shouldn't. Somebody does have to wake up.
# Third - What the government produces, all competitors share equally. What microsoft produces, it keeps to itself.
If everyone were really allowed to use it equally, the government should be required to use something more along the lines of the BSD license, rather than the GPL, because Microsoft simply can't use code that's under the GPL (they'd have to release all their code), but they can use source that's under the BSD license (TCP/IP...). If the NSA produces a linux distro that's under the GPL, they are not allowing all competitors to share equally. If they released it under the BSD license, they would.
That's a good point, but I don't think OpenGL is even written for the Xbox. If Carmack wanted to make his game in OpenGL, he might also have to implement GL on the Xbox hardware, which, as far as I know, has not even been tried.
Do you have a link for that?
Does anyone else think this might be at least a little annoying? I mean, it would slow me down a lot to have to assign one hand to using the mouse at all time. I often leave the mouse to type or enter strings of commands, and I wouldn't want to have a wireless mouse to use, especially if I can't even expect it to be on the desk. Keyboard shortcuts are great, but this wireless/deskless mouse seems like it would make it hard to use them.
I'll probably be getting a shave from him before my best friend's wedding.
My Best Friend's Wedding? I saw that movie, and I really don't think it's necessary to be professionally shaved beforehand. I mean, it's just a movie.
There are few better ways to get angrily flamed than pointing out the fact that you attend (or used to attend) MIT. A lot of people here wish they'd gotten in. Please disregard the imbicilic posts above.
What would happen to you if it was discovered that you were all of a sudden legally blind? Would your employer fire you? Is that legal? I say you fake the test to make it seem like you can barely see, and get the doctor to diagnose it as a work-related injury (sitting in front of a screen all day is bad for your eyes). Then you could sue your employer for making you blind. Or something.
fantasize about opening a hip babershop...
Ignoring for the moment that I don't know what a 'babershop' is, and assuming that what was meant was 'barbershop,' what is a 'hip barbershop?' Is it, by any chance, a place at which one has his/her hip hair shorn? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't have a very significant problem with hair on my hips...
If there really were aliens on earth, UFOs circling the solar system, etc., you'd be guaranteed that somebody, somewhere who wasn't hushed up by "the government" would have reported it on the 'net.
If that did show up on the net, posted by the "one person that wasn't hushed up by the government," who would believe it? Would you believe it? Or would you dismiss it as some bizarre conspiracy theory?
I'm just asking, because it seems rather important to the issue at hand.
What did you discover that is this important? Did you get a couple of weeks of supercomputer time somewhere and calculate the actual meaning of life, the universe, and everything? Are you worried about revealing to us the information because it isn't 42?
At least for the geek community, that could be the single most crushing realization in history. Except possibly the discovery that Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds are really long lost twins separated at birth. That could be pretty heart wrenching.
By the way, I'm just kidding.
You're right, this is a trial run for Palladium. An MS-only hardware platform designed to only run software authorized by Billy G. But, as you say, it's only a test. They are not only testing the hardware platform and setting up the manufacturing process and distribution machine, but they're also testing the hardware security. Each time someone breaks down one little barrier on the road to getting Linux to run, the boys down at Microsoft learn a little bit more about how to keep people from doing that. With every little step that the Xbox-Linux project is making, the odds of putting Linux (or anything else) on the Xbox 2 diminish.
Any R&D done now will be meaningless when the real thing comes along, because anything that we learn will also be learned by MS. They'll know our capabilities, and they will build the machine to make everything we did with the Xbox impossible on the Xbox 2.
Where does Microsoft go if Open Source software ultimately wins out and makes the operating system a no-cost commodity just like the web browser? Long ago, the web browser could only be had for a fee, and MS commoditized it by making it free, because they still had other products to sell. These other products were ultimately more important and more expensive, so for them it was a good choice. Linux and its open source brethren could do the exact same thing to the operating system, and Microsoft really doesn't have anything else that is more expensive or more important than their OS. Office uses Windows function calls that aren't available to anyone else, and if they wanted to port it to Linux, they would be forced to reveal a considerable amount of their precious intellectual property that they seem so convinced should be secret.
Because of this, Microsoft would be rather reluctant to port their Office software to a platform like Linux. But this hurts them more than it hurts anyone else. Programs like OpenOffice and StarOffice are maturing, and are approaching the professional quality of the incumbent MS Office. And, in the case of OpenOffice, it is free to use and the source is available to modify. OpenOffice will make the office suite a free commodity, just as Linux will make the operating system a free commodity, just as Internet Explorer made the web browser a free commodity (for the masses).
Once Microsoft's main products have been made free commodities, what has been left for Microsoft? Do they continue trying to sell expensive bloatware that has been commoditized by superior products? Do they seek legislation to protect their monopoly from the same government that is failing to punish them for said monopoly? Or do they go the way of IBM, go quiet for a few years, and then come back as a support company? In the recent past they have been doing the first option, but it appears that time is running out on that. They are now, evidently, attempting to do the second option. This is foolish, however, because this is America, land of free markets, and the people really won't take well to being forced to purchase anything. Ultimately, and probably in the relatively near future, Microsoft will be forced to move over to the support side of the business. They will not go out of business, but they will never again see the infinite billions they currently enjoy.
I don't want to make that bet at all, even though I am a betting man. That's probably because if the MPAA had its way, any person who buys less than 5 DVDs a month would be arrested and fined.
Editors: Isn't that censorship? Wouldn't that also be morally and ethically wrong?
Directors: Well, that's different. It's censorship if you're allowed to publish an edited version of our movie, and not censorship if you are forcibly unable to publish said edited version. Don't you even know the definition of censorship?
Editors: Do you?
the industry won't allow its movies to be broadcast because they don't want viewers to record 'perfect copies' of movies.
Well they already have a measure in place to prevent this in the analog world that would work just fine when everything goes digital. The version of the movie that they release to the TV stations is of very poor quality; it is downsampled so as to seem fuzzy and crappy. Not only that, but the good swearwords are covered up and the blood is cut out. These are by no means 'perfect copies' of the movies.
Or at the very least, get a black mark on his permanent record and make it much harder for him to get into a good college/university or get a good job.
Interviewer: Have you ever been convicted of a major crime?
Jon: Actually yes.
Interviewer: startled Oh? For what, may I ask?
Jon: Well, um, remember DeCSS? Well, I wrote it.
Interviewer: Wait a minute... Jon Johansen? Well, I suppose there's no question about your skills...
Since it's such a high profile case, it probably won't negatively affect his employment opportunities.