(which means it's no different than the first two - and frankly, 99% of Hollywood's offerings for the past 20 years).
Of course, I'll watch it because I need to relieve the tension of the uncompleted story, that's been left in this state since I read about Darth Vader and Obiwan's volcano fight in Starlog back in like, 1977 or something. Worth $9? meh.
Nortel Contivity client (+authentication via random token) doesn't seem to work with the built-in VPN client. At least not in my setup. (I'm running 10.3.9).
I'm aware of the Microsoft RDP client for OS X. I was using an even better one (snappier) a few years back, derived from a GNU/Linux port (modified for key mapping). Haven't checked out the latest MS one yet.
GIven the heat-transmission properties of diamond, one would think you would not want teflon in the equation at all. A pure-diamond frying pan would be teh ultimate for teh crepes.
Older versions of Opera used the MFC MDI interface.
MDI is teh runny diarhea.
I don't know what they're using now, because when I tried Opera back when they were using MDI (and actually expected me to PAY?!), I ran so far and so fast, that I never looked back.
My impression on the Microsoft purchase of Connectix was for several reasons:
1. Virtual Servers (a solution looking for a problem - if your apps can't coexist in a server environment, then the apps need to be fixed!)
2. More vigorous enforcement of XP licensing on VPC from those dirty pirate Mac users. (wasn't effective - still trivial to circumvent)
3. x86 emulation on PPC - this is the most interesting one; because I own a dual 2GHz G5, and VPC is slow as hell. Even on XP, which is faster than any other emulated Windows OS. Even on Linux x86. Very slow. Dog Slow. Makes you want to tear your hair out waiting for an Explorer window to open slow. On the other hand: The whole reason I run VPC is to run my VPN software, so I can access my Work PC via RDP. And frankly, that's MUCH faster. I'm wondering if there isn't some goofy display processing problem that Microsoft just hasn't been able to work out yet. The other issue, is that Mac OS X is possibly a barrier to VPC operating fast. I recall that going from OS 9 to OS X, performance took a big hit, because OS 9 was cooperatively multitasked, and OS X's preemptive multitasking just didn't give VPC enough luvin. So maybe Microsoft will address that somewhat in whatever OS it's going to run on Xbox360. This, in itself, is a rather interesting question - will Microsoft continue to leverage Windows and DirectX on this new PPC platform? (since that was the whole marketing angle used to woo developers to XBox in the first place.) Are they going to dig up the old NTPPC code for Xbox360? Or are they going with something else?
The DeBeers Cartel keeps the prices artificially inflated by constraining global supply, illegally, I might add (they are prevented, by law, from operating directly in the United States; I suspect that if they were a US company, things would be different).
Increasing the supply of diamonds outside of DeBeers' control isn't fighting against Capitalism. It's fighting FOR Capitalism, and against a monopoly. I hope that DeBeers chokes on their fricking diamonds, and that they all die. Monopolies, Oligopolies, and Cartels are ANTI CAPITALIST.
I never said that IE should be unbundled. I said (sic) that there will never be real competition in the browser market.
Personally, I feel that the solution to the Microsoft problem should be to send them a clear signal, that bundling is perfectly acceptable (then maybe they'll go ahead with what they've wanted to do for years, and bundle Visual Studio, and SQL server with the OS). Apple bundles, and hardly anybody complains. The benefits of bundling far outweigh the costs. True, a company that makes a text editor only, or a web browser only, cannot compete. But another OS vendor that can leverage all of these important components and bundle them (like Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and BeOS all have done) is simply doing actual innovation.
Yeah, I *do* disagree with the technical way in which Microsoft bundled IE (by mixing up the libraries and making them indistinguishable JUST to get out of making a legal distinction - when a technical distinction would be actually useful to developers).
What I think the solution to Microsoft is?
Clearly they're a monopoly - but the leverage rules don't seem to apply to the market the same way with software. I'd say that what needs to be done is LET them bundle all they want, but because they're a monopoly, they should be required to at least open the file formats, and probably the API as well. And they should DEFINATELY be prohibited from making exclusive licensing deals with hardware OEMs, but I don't know how you enforce that. Microsoft will always have a means of intimidating hardware OEMs out of shipping competing OSes.
I don't know if that's enough to "level the playing field" for the other players. But it would mitigate a lot of the "harm" suffered by consumers at the hands of this Monopoly, at least during this period of time (that could last a couple more decades?) while we're waiting for the market to correct the situation. (Firefox and Open Source is a sign of that correction: Apple's success also).
better still- if one can copy a password out of a file on the USB drive or floppy (or even a burned CD ROM), and paste it into the login field, then a keylogger will never see keystrokes other than "ctrl-c" and "ctrl-v".
But, wait, actually. Seriously for a second. Isn't this exactly the type of competition that the DOJ argued would/could never happen as long IE was integrated into Windows?
Apples and oranges.
Firefox is FREE. Netscape was payment-optional. There are non-free browsers that still cannot compete in any meaningful sense, despite feature superiority. (no, I'm not one of those goofy Opera nuts).
No software company will EVER sell a browser that competes with a free-bundled IE, on the most popular desktop OS. If you force IE to become unbundled, there's a chance for competition. But you're still trying to force a market solution on a product, treating it like a commodity, when software should actually be treated like a service. (WRT the definition of "dumping" or selling below-cost, etc.).
It's hard to tell, as a user of Microsoft's Virtual PC on a dual-2ghz G5; Windows XP is damn slow. Almost unusably slow. On the other hand, when I use it to run RDP connections to my work computer, that machine is much more responsive through RDP, over a network, than the XP system that's hosting it. (wierd). In fact, some folks have figured out how to host the VPC WinXP RDP session to a local instance of the Mac version of the RDP client, (I was unable to get that to work), and they say it's faster. So maybe there's some wierd display bottleneck built into VPC7 for the Mac, that won't be present in the emulator they build for xBox360. . .
. . . better still, is how Cringely thinks that xBox360 is going to end up cannibalizing Microsoft's OEM sales for home PC's (it's going to play games, video, music, and surf the net - so home users need a pc why, exactly?)
I don't necessarily agree with Cringely on this one - but he has been known to be correct from time to time./c3p0_voice.
The next time the system boots, it copies the memory dump contents into a new file (which is now safe to create) before the pagefile is used for paging again...
which means that your STARTUP VOLUME must not only have pagefile space allocated, to RAM size, it needs an additional chunk of FREE space (assuming logs and whatnot haven't eaten it up in the meantime) to write out the memory.dmp - no biggie for desktop systems. Non Trivial for Servers that may be running on 4 gigs of RAM, especially with earlier versions of NT where you can't partition your startup drive larger than 4 gigs.
Yup. Memory dump - impossible! Better still, if you run into a disk space problem, you end up with a truncated and corrupted memory.dmp - spend hours uploading it to Microsoft Support - wait days for them to respond to tell you it's garbage, and maybe, not reproduct the crash again afterwards. . .
It's doesn't have to have massive memory. Why can't it stream from your PC, for instance? You're limiting the solution to the state of the art of today. Lot's of bandwidth to phones on the horizon.
the technology may happen, but I doubt that the providers are going to LET it happen for less than a dime a minute. Would YOU pay that much to listen to a tune you own hosted on your own PC? Probably not. But enough people will, and they'll stubbornly hold to that pricing model. Because they're greedy, and have no vision. Who knows what awesome technologies would develop if wireless cell network access became nearly-free? That's the barrier. Same for broadband to the home. If the price could come down for that bandwidth, I think that pretty much the current model for delivery of Television and Movie entertainment would be toast.
Particularly for United Airlines employees and retirees.
(Ironic, put in 30 years between 1960 and 1990, and 15 years into your retirement, they drop the hammer on your promised bennies because of political decisions made by people you had nothing to do with after you retired).
Mister Balmer: I will HAPPILY use Microsoft Software 24 hours a day if you meet these following requirements:
1. Protect my privacy. 2. Protect my systems security. 3. Open your damn source-code, so I can be assured that you have done your due-dilligence for #1 and #2 and that I can be assured that the software will move forward after I incur the considerable expense of adopting it, that I can trust that the software won't be discontinued or abandoned, or taken in an unpalatable architectural direction. 4. Open your damn internal Development and Test Procedures to independent audit (ie, become ISO-9001 certified) - so I can be assured that you have done your due-dilligence for #1 and #2. 5. Don't charge me an arm and a leg. (I'm willing to PAY for excellence. I'm not willing to pay for mediocrity, with an "excellence" sticker slapped on, while you tell me with a straigh face "trust me, it's excellent!" - all while the world's computer systems crash and burn around us from vulnerabilities and flaws). If it's mediocre software, I will pay mediocre (free/beer) prices. 6. I own my data. Let me do whatever the hell I want to with my data. (ie. open your file-formats, and stop trying to ram DRM down my throat). 7. Stop buying and trashing other independent software vendors through predatory practices. If you satisfy 1-6, above, I still can't trust that a monopoly with no real competition, has any incentive to continue to do so.
If you do that, I'll happily use Microsoft Software 24 hours a day, and I'll even pay to purchase (not rent) it.
...All users care about is whether your site or software gives them what they want. They don't care if the person behind it is a high school kid...
BS. Users care if the company will be around tomorrow. Users care if there are some hidden security vulnerabilities in the software. Users care if the software has any stolen IP in the code. Users care if the software will integrate with their existing stuff.
A lot of this hinges on experience.
This is why the dotcom era saw thousands of startups come and go. And companies like IBM continues chugging along. True: the conventional wisdom left out folks who put their dotcom trust into old standby's like DEC or HP. But chances are, when you purchase the product of a high-schooler's startup, you may end up with something like Napster on your system. That won't do you any good 5 years down the road - so it only temporarily satisifes the requirements of the Home User market. Not something to build empires upon.
The Franklinn one about trading Liberty for Security (thank you sir, may I have another) -
or Patrick Henry's "Give me Libery, or give me death!"
Then there's Tom DeLay's statement that the "Constitution isn't a suicide-pact."
Spineless twits sold our Liberty off. And my countrymen voted for them. At what cost, will we ever regain it? I hope the (temporary illusion of) security was worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
Christian Science Monitor says bad acting, bad dialog, but visually spectacular.
(which means it's no different than the first two - and frankly, 99% of Hollywood's offerings for the past 20 years).
Of course, I'll watch it because I need to relieve the tension of the uncompleted story, that's been left in this state since I read about Darth Vader and Obiwan's volcano fight in Starlog back in like, 1977 or something. Worth $9? meh.
Nortel Contivity client (+authentication via random token) doesn't seem to work with the built-in VPN client. At least not in my setup. (I'm running 10.3.9).
I'm aware of the Microsoft RDP client for OS X. I was using an even better one (snappier) a few years back, derived from a GNU/Linux port (modified for key mapping). Haven't checked out the latest MS one yet.
GIven the heat-transmission properties of diamond, one would think you would not want teflon in the equation at all. A pure-diamond frying pan would be teh ultimate for teh crepes.
I would LOVE to see a robust tabbed implementation in Office, especially if (like Firefox) you could run multiple instances of a tabbed application.
.
Excel has tabs. .
(that's sarcasm. I'm shooting for Funny here)
Older versions of Opera used the MFC MDI interface.
MDI is teh runny diarhea.
I don't know what they're using now, because when I tried Opera back when they were using MDI (and actually expected me to PAY?!), I ran so far and so fast, that I never looked back.
My impression on the Microsoft purchase of Connectix was for several reasons:
1. Virtual Servers (a solution looking for a problem - if your apps can't coexist in a server environment, then the apps need to be fixed!)
2. More vigorous enforcement of XP licensing on VPC from those dirty pirate Mac users. (wasn't effective - still trivial to circumvent)
3. x86 emulation on PPC - this is the most interesting one; because I own a dual 2GHz G5, and VPC is slow as hell. Even on XP, which is faster than any other emulated Windows OS. Even on Linux x86. Very slow. Dog Slow. Makes you want to tear your hair out waiting for an Explorer window to open slow. On the other hand: The whole reason I run VPC is to run my VPN software, so I can access my Work PC via RDP. And frankly, that's MUCH faster. I'm wondering if there isn't some goofy display processing problem that Microsoft just hasn't been able to work out yet. The other issue, is that Mac OS X is possibly a barrier to VPC operating fast. I recall that going from OS 9 to OS X, performance took a big hit, because OS 9 was cooperatively multitasked, and OS X's preemptive multitasking just didn't give VPC enough luvin. So maybe Microsoft will address that somewhat in whatever OS it's going to run on Xbox360. This, in itself, is a rather interesting question - will Microsoft continue to leverage Windows and DirectX on this new PPC platform? (since that was the whole marketing angle used to woo developers to XBox in the first place.) Are they going to dig up the old NTPPC code for Xbox360? Or are they going with something else?
They're already that common.
The DeBeers Cartel keeps the prices artificially inflated by constraining global supply, illegally, I might add (they are prevented, by law, from operating directly in the United States; I suspect that if they were a US company, things would be different).
Increasing the supply of diamonds outside of DeBeers' control isn't fighting against Capitalism. It's fighting FOR Capitalism, and against a monopoly. I hope that DeBeers chokes on their fricking diamonds, and that they all die. Monopolies, Oligopolies, and Cartels are ANTI CAPITALIST.
- they have to make educated guesses about the problem and can definitely make mistakes.
Yes. Especially when the patient's HMO dictates what testing can and cannot be done.
I never said that IE should be unbundled. I said (sic) that there will never be real competition in the browser market.
Personally, I feel that the solution to the Microsoft problem should be to send them a clear signal, that bundling is perfectly acceptable (then maybe they'll go ahead with what they've wanted to do for years, and bundle Visual Studio, and SQL server with the OS). Apple bundles, and hardly anybody complains. The benefits of bundling far outweigh the costs. True, a company that makes a text editor only, or a web browser only, cannot compete. But another OS vendor that can leverage all of these important components and bundle them (like Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and BeOS all have done) is simply doing actual innovation.
Yeah, I *do* disagree with the technical way in which Microsoft bundled IE (by mixing up the libraries and making them indistinguishable JUST to get out of making a legal distinction - when a technical distinction would be actually useful to developers).
What I think the solution to Microsoft is?
Clearly they're a monopoly - but the leverage rules don't seem to apply to the market the same way with software. I'd say that what needs to be done is LET them bundle all they want, but because they're a monopoly, they should be required to at least open the file formats, and probably the API as well. And they should DEFINATELY be prohibited from making exclusive licensing deals with hardware OEMs, but I don't know how you enforce that. Microsoft will always have a means of intimidating hardware OEMs out of shipping competing OSes.
I don't know if that's enough to "level the playing field" for the other players. But it would mitigate a lot of the "harm" suffered by consumers at the hands of this Monopoly, at least during this period of time (that could last a couple more decades?) while we're waiting for the market to correct the situation. (Firefox and Open Source is a sign of that correction: Apple's success also).
better still- if one can copy a password out of a file on the USB drive or floppy (or even a burned CD ROM), and paste it into the login field, then a keylogger will never see keystrokes other than "ctrl-c" and "ctrl-v".
But, wait, actually. Seriously for a second. Isn't this exactly the type of competition that the DOJ argued would/could never happen as long IE was integrated into Windows?
Apples and oranges.
Firefox is FREE. Netscape was payment-optional. There are non-free browsers that still cannot compete in any meaningful sense, despite feature superiority. (no, I'm not one of those goofy Opera nuts).
No software company will EVER sell a browser that competes with a free-bundled IE, on the most popular desktop OS. If you force IE to become unbundled, there's a chance for competition. But you're still trying to force a market solution on a product, treating it like a commodity, when software should actually be treated like a service. (WRT the definition of "dumping" or selling below-cost, etc.).
It's hard to tell, as a user of Microsoft's Virtual PC on a dual-2ghz G5; Windows XP is damn slow. Almost unusably slow. On the other hand, when I use it to run RDP connections to my work computer, that machine is much more responsive through RDP, over a network, than the XP system that's hosting it. (wierd). In fact, some folks have figured out how to host the VPC WinXP RDP session to a local instance of the Mac version of the RDP client, (I was unable to get that to work), and they say it's faster. So maybe there's some wierd display bottleneck built into VPC7 for the Mac, that won't be present in the emulator they build for xBox360. . .
. . . better still, is how Cringely thinks that xBox360 is going to end up cannibalizing Microsoft's OEM sales for home PC's (it's going to play games, video, music, and surf the net - so home users need a pc why, exactly?)
/c3p0_voice.
I don't necessarily agree with Cringely on this one - but he has been known to be correct from time to time.
The next time the system boots, it copies the memory dump contents into a new file (which is now safe to create) before the pagefile is used for paging again...
which means that your STARTUP VOLUME must not only have pagefile space allocated, to RAM size, it needs an additional chunk of FREE space (assuming logs and whatnot haven't eaten it up in the meantime) to write out the memory.dmp - no biggie for desktop systems. Non Trivial for Servers that may be running on 4 gigs of RAM, especially with earlier versions of NT where you can't partition your startup drive larger than 4 gigs.
Yup. Memory dump - impossible!
Better still, if you run into a disk space problem, you end up with a truncated and corrupted memory.dmp - spend hours uploading it to Microsoft Support - wait days for them to respond to tell you it's garbage, and maybe, not reproduct the crash again afterwards. . .
'nuff said.
It's doesn't have to have massive memory. Why can't it stream from your PC, for instance? You're limiting the solution to the state of the art of today. Lot's of bandwidth to phones on the horizon.
the technology may happen, but I doubt that the providers are going to LET it happen for less than a dime a minute. Would YOU pay that much to listen to a tune you own hosted on your own PC? Probably not. But enough people will, and they'll stubbornly hold to that pricing model. Because they're greedy, and have no vision. Who knows what awesome technologies would develop if wireless cell network access became nearly-free? That's the barrier. Same for broadband to the home. If the price could come down for that bandwidth, I think that pretty much the current model for delivery of Television and Movie entertainment would be toast.
To start and run a business without ever having held a job is a sure path to disaster for all but the most talented, hardworking, and lucky.
. . . and well-connected.
... widespread demand for hardware would still have driven PC prices down to commodity levels. .... and then some.
.
Imagine you're a software vendor.
Imagine that there's 5 Operating Systems, with 3 versions each to cover, on 2 different hardware platforms each.
Imagine how much your test-lab is going to cost.
Now, imagine what would happen to the price of Commercially Developed Software would be like, given the cost for development and testing. .
It already has.
Particularly for United Airlines employees and retirees.
(Ironic, put in 30 years between 1960 and 1990, and 15 years into your retirement, they drop the hammer on your promised bennies because of political decisions made by people you had nothing to do with after you retired).
Quote from bill himself.
... basically ever."
Asked if he'd ever personally been hit by a computer virus, Gates responded, "I haven't had a virus on my machine
That's because, unlike most Slashdotters, Bill Gates does not consider "MS Windows" to be a Virus.
Mister Balmer:
I will HAPPILY use Microsoft Software 24 hours a day if you meet these following requirements:
1. Protect my privacy.
2. Protect my systems security.
3. Open your damn source-code, so I can be assured that you have done your due-dilligence for #1 and #2 and that I can be assured that the software will move forward after I incur the considerable expense of adopting it, that I can trust that the software won't be discontinued or abandoned, or taken in an unpalatable architectural direction.
4. Open your damn internal Development and Test Procedures to independent audit (ie, become ISO-9001 certified) - so I can be assured that you have done your due-dilligence for #1 and #2.
5. Don't charge me an arm and a leg. (I'm willing to PAY for excellence. I'm not willing to pay for mediocrity, with an "excellence" sticker slapped on, while you tell me with a straigh face "trust me, it's excellent!" - all while the world's computer systems crash and burn around us from vulnerabilities and flaws). If it's mediocre software, I will pay mediocre (free/beer) prices.
6. I own my data. Let me do whatever the hell I want to with my data. (ie. open your file-formats, and stop trying to ram DRM down my throat).
7. Stop buying and trashing other independent software vendors through predatory practices. If you satisfy 1-6, above, I still can't trust that a monopoly with no real competition, has any incentive to continue to do so.
If you do that, I'll happily use Microsoft Software 24 hours a day, and I'll even pay to purchase (not rent) it.
...All users care about is whether your site or software gives them what they want. They don't care if the person behind it is a high school kid...
BS. Users care if the company will be around tomorrow. Users care if there are some hidden security vulnerabilities in the software. Users care if the software has any stolen IP in the code. Users care if the software will integrate with their existing stuff.
A lot of this hinges on experience.
This is why the dotcom era saw thousands of startups come and go. And companies like IBM continues chugging along. True: the conventional wisdom left out folks who put their dotcom trust into old standby's like DEC or HP. But chances are, when you purchase the product of a high-schooler's startup, you may end up with something like Napster on your system. That won't do you any good 5 years down the road - so it only temporarily satisifes the requirements of the Home User market. Not something to build empires upon.
If you make a gift of pork to someone whose beliefs say "don't eat pork," should they thank you and chow down?
Soylent Java is made of Classes!
Some appropriate quotes come to mind.
The Franklinn one about trading Liberty for Security (thank you sir, may I have another) -
or Patrick Henry's "Give me Libery, or give me death!"
Then there's Tom DeLay's statement that the "Constitution isn't a suicide-pact."
Spineless twits sold our Liberty off. And my countrymen voted for them. At what cost, will we ever regain it? I hope the (temporary illusion of) security was worth it.
I drafted a letter this morning, and will send it this evening, to my Senator (Boxer) that states:
You voted to approve RealID.
I need a Senator with a spine.
Therefore, you can not count on my vote in 2006.
Good riddance to you and your ilk.