> I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge > (I think) $599 for the commercial license.
Simple, there is nothing in Copyright law that allows a seller to control what private uses I put their work to. Copyright prohibits reproduction and public performance only without some other contractual agreement. So I probably couldn't timeshare the software but I can do whatever else I want with it, and no they don't have any claim to my own intellectual output by virtue of having used their software in developing it. If a vendor wants some other restrictions they need to enter into a legally binding contract. A college bookstore should be able to deal with pulling a contract off the back of the box and having a designated employee who could be authorized to sign for the store. Yes it is messy, but they want to change the normal accepted terms of trade so they get to carry the burden of inconvience.
And note that this is totally different from the GPL, it can be a shrinkwrap license. How? Because you don't have to accept it! Yes, it is true. Simply obey the restrictions imposed by Copyright and you are free to ignore the GPL. By doing any of the actions it discusses you have either accepted the GPL or committed felony copyright infringement. And that is the differnce, the GPL adds permissions you wouldn't have while all other EULAs are attempts to remove rights.
> And you've been around/. long enough to know what would happen, especially on the Apple section, hence -1 > Interesting Flamebait would be appropriate.
Thats why I did it. At least a few fanboys will be exposed to thoughts that haven't been hand selected for them by Steve and what the hell, as you noted I have been here awhile and have plenty of karma to burn. Since the karma cap went in ages ago there really isn't any reason NOT to stir things up once in awhile.
> This product that apple sells, includes the hardware, deal with it. You're the whiny bitch.
No, some products they sell includes hardware. They also sell boxed sets of OS X, probably intended for upgrades. I see nothing in the original intent behind Copyright that limits me from doing whatever the hell I want with those bits, including merging in 3rd party patch sets that will allow it to boot and run on generic hardware. The DMCA might say otherwise but it is immoral and every right thinking person should make a point of violating it as a matter of civil disobedience.
It all comes down to whether you believe software is sold or licensed. I hold that since the days when Radio Shack made you sign a dread EULA in the store before allowing any 25- or 26- products to leave the store, all software sold at retail is just that, sold. It is copyrighted, but the EULA is meaningless piffle which should be laughed at.
> But I don't understand the people who truly don't see what's immoral about, for example, running Mac OS X in a > way that Apple expressly asks you not to.
Because I don't recognize their moral authority to tell me HOW to use their product. Their Copyright only gives them the right to control making copies. Yea I'd violate the letter of that if an iso appeared that would boot on my hardware simply because of curiosity. I wouldn't adopt it for daily use and certainly wouldn't use it at work without buying a copy. (Although until the first upgrade hits retail I'd probably have to buy the PPC copy and call it close enough.)
And I don't recognize any right for them to say their copyrighted work can ONLY be accessed on their brand of player. That is the same sort of bullshit arguments the MPAA and the DVD-CCA use to tell me I can't play DVDs I own on a DVD drive equipped PC I own because they refuse to bless a player for my preferred platform. By your logic I should just forego DVD on Linux or be a good lemming and install Windows. Wrong, I didn't 'license' my season sets of South Park, I BOUGHT copies and I'll read them wherever I damned well please and if I want to skip the trice damned commercials for Drawn Together and the Daily Show I will. And if I ever decided to install OS X I'd BUY a copy of it and do whatever I damned well wanted to with it as well and Steve could just go perform an improbable act of self procreation if he didn't like it. It is just a fscking product people, you don't have to join Steve'e cult and lose all sense of right and wrong.
What a lame bunch of whiny bitches they sound like.
Newsflash, OS X will be hacked to run on generic hardware because A) people want to do it and B) just because they can. Apple whining about it and trying to stop it only makes group B more motivated. Personally it won't matter for me because I doubt any of the hacked versions will run on AMD processors, but if it did I'd probably download it and have a look because the last version I saw was 10.0 and there aren't exactly a lot of Macs here in the wilderness of Southwest Louisiana. If I actually liked it I'd probably buy a copy just to be fair about it, even if Apple wouldn't officially support it.
But don't expect me to get all worked up in a big pity party for the idiots. I really don't see anything wrong with bootlegging a product that the publisher refuses to publish. Same way I WOULD have repurchased the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD to replace my aging VHS print..... but instead I have bootleg a DVD set because George Lucas won't sell them. (No, the remake isn't the same thing. Sorry, Han shot first.) Same principle, Apple refuses to sell the product so a certain mindset of people see it as a challenge to correct the flaw.
And no, artificially tying the product to their lackluster hardware offerings is NOT acceptable. Yes I said lackluster. Sure they are pretty but as PC hardware they just ain't all that. Cheap plastic cases with wimpy power supplies and little expansion for the desktop and useless one button laptops. Gimme a big manly box made of 2mil aluminum and a big ass stable power plant to start, then let me pick out a premium motherboard and memory and an drives of my choice. Why should the OS vendor get to make all of my hardware choices for me? And never forget the insane markup they get for their pretty but bland specced hardware.
> After paying for 3.1, 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP....
That really isn't a reason to hate M$ dude, look at the timeframe. Hell, I think I have bought more Linux sets. Lemme see here:
Yggdrasil three times, twice from "The CD-ROM Store" in Dallas, once direct from Yggdrasil Computing. Jeze, does that date my sorry butt, back then we had special stores selling these new fangled CD-ROMS! Not counting the various Walnut Creek assortments I bought.
Redhat 4.0, RedHat 5.1 (From a RH booth), RedHat 6.1, all boxed sets.
OpenBSD 3.5.
Ok, that is a tie assuming you were really stupid enough to buy ME. The point is that if you want the new shiny ya sometimes pay for it. In Free Software you pay to get the books and support the distro, with Microsoft you pay because it is proprietary software. (Or you bootleg like my poor ass did with DOS 4.01, DOS 5, DOS 6.xx and WfW 3.11. I managed to get a NFR copy of W95 cheap enough to pay for, and my laptop was bundled with W98SE so I haven't had to bookleg a Microsoft product since WfW.)
> Personally, I don't think Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with their release...
Me neither, but the severe shortages undermined the first to market advantage without doubt. Yes a lot of boxes will be sold between now and PS3 launch but we all know the magic of the "Golden Quarter" and they could have sold a lot more boxes had they been able to supply them.
> If the PS3 debuts in June at $400, it was a horrible launch...
No, if Sony pulls that off they probably win right there. But I'd agree they probably won't make that time or price. But they are smart enough to realize they damned well better have ample supply in the system by Black Friday 06 so that means they will start pushing boxes by late Sep no matter what else gets compromised to do it.
>...at half the price of the Sony's console...
Only if you assume Sony is totally insane does that situation develop. They know what is at stake and will compete. Being a hundred over Xbox is acceptable, them being the new system but double would be fatal, thus not permitted.
>...that if it doesn't have DVR capabilities...
None of this crop of consoles will be DVRs and I'd bet it doesn't happen on the next generation either. Everybody talks about it but it is simply improbable. PVR means that at any moment the system must be able to devote overhead to realtime streaming, and nowadays that means the potential for HD content bouncing around the bus. Plus there are no standards for the input. You would need co-marketing agreements with each satelite and cable provider to gain access to their content, remember it is all encrypted now.
> Yes, because there have been so many titles announced for the Revolution already.
Don't really care all that much myself. However based on trends going back a decade now it is fairly safe to assume Nintendo will quickly build a broad and deep catalog while Sony will focus on the male teen/young adult demographic again, as will Microsoft.
Because Xbox didn't sell much in Japan and neither does the 360 appear to be, Sony will have the advantage of having most independent Japanese development houses on their side and will probably rival Nintendo for sheer number of titles, assuming that their battle with Xbox doesn't turn into a massacre that drives 3rd party developers away. But beyond a certain minimum number, title count probably won't decide the issue between Xbox and Playstation. It will be critical for Nintendo though because they will need good coverage in every market segment NOT involved in the scorced earth war between Sony & Microsoft plus enough in that area to at least be seen as competitive.
Having not bothered with any console since the Atari2600, here is how I view the landscape.
Xbox 360
Pro: Out first, never discount the advantage of getting on shelves first. Fairly solid design, nothing too daring. Massive marketing push
Con: Fairly solid design, nothing too daring. Early mover advantage all but negated by supply issues, Xmas '05 was a bust. Only a DVD Drive
PS3
Pro: Backward compatibility with PS2 and PS1. Proven ability to churn out titles appealing to key 16-24yo male demographic. BlueRay, especially if it wins in the broader next gen DVD war.
Con: Late arrival
???: Cell. If it can be harnessed it will be a major plus, otherwise another Itanic fiasco.
Revolution
Pro: Widest range of software covering the most catagories.
Con: From teh prelim info available it appears to be woefully underpowered.
???: New input system is a total wildcard much like Cell.
I'd say Nintendo will survive this round simply because it will mostly be fighting for ground not coveted by the other two contenders. If the new input system permits new catagories of gaming the others can't port it could gain major ground.
However there really isn't room for both Xbox and the Playstation since they both target the same demographic and neither is likely to be able to slide into the media center/tivo market with their current generation hardware.
If Xbox suffers another lackluster second place finish to Sony it will be hard to convince the instituitional investors who hold vast quantities of Microsoft stock in pension plans to piss away billions more on a third try. Sony on the other hand can probably afford to lose a round and come back with another try so while the pressure is on Sony to deliver a knockout and end the war they probably can better survive a loss while for Microsoft it is probably "win or go home" time. Expect them to realize that and play for keeps, slashing prices at the first hint of erosion in sales, knowing this brief period before PS3 & Revolution launch is their best opportunity to lock in customers.
Sweet! But it does kinda support my original point. Maybe by the end of this year we will finally see the first product based on holographic tech. But notice this is "only" 300GB instead of the "terrabyte at first and sky's the limit" originally touted. But if they can even get this much shipping at anything like a sane price we really won't care about whether BD-ROM or HD-DVD 'win' their current pissing fight. BlueRay will be remembered as nice tech that was obsolete before it could gain acceptance. (HD-DVD doesn't even really count as new tech, just DVD with a blue laser.)
> yeah, computers aren't hundreds of thousands of times better on every front > over the years or anything.
Yes they are. But they probably won't be hundreds of times better in five years, probably not in ten. They will continue their relentless improvement though. That is the point I was making, that when someone promises a single improvement that is hundreds of times better than current tech you should be sceptical because they rarely pan out, at least on the timescales being touted to attract investors.
Sure we will eventually move beyond hard drives. But remember when it was bubble memory that was THE next big thing. Didn't happen. This idea might pan out, it might not. Demonstrating a theory in a lab is a long way from a mass produced product. Lots of ideas never make the trip and of those that do the end result is often less impressive in product form than the initial press release. And by the time this one makes it from the labs to the shelves something might eclipse it.
Back to bubble memory, it had everything going for it. Only problem was traditional hard drive makers could crank out incremental improvements faster than anyone else could keep up. So hard drives went from a couple of megabytes to hundreds for half the price so fast all other storage technology at the time was swept aside before it could mature.
Seems every few months we get a story about a wonder just a few years down the road. Most never get here, and none on the original optimistic schedule.
Where are the holographics DVDs? A few years out, which is where they were a few years ago.
OLEDs are finally showing up on small displays but remember it was only a few years ago we were promised they would supplant Plasma and LCD in 'just a couple of years?' They might do it someday, but not this year.
> I would like to hear from those who find this useful because I don't get the point yet.
One reason is to increase the hardware diversity available to Linux. If we can run on enough different hardware we can survive when Microsoft closes the traditional PC platform down to a glorified Xbox. Granted that Apple will probably beat Bill to that step but we might at least be able to make a co-existance deal with His Steveness.
Plus this might have some potential in and of itself. Think about it. Mac on Linux gives you Mac and Linux apps side by side. This is an Intel box so Wine, Crossover Office, VMWare and eventually Xen all provide ways to get Windows apps into the mix.
> If apple switched to Windows they would strictly be overpriced hardware.
You mean like the iPod is just an overpriced mp3 player? Hasn't stopped Apple from selling at huge margins based on a 'brand experience.' Same way Nike is just selling some fucking shoes.
But no, I doubt Apple is considering switching to Windows yet. But it will probably happen eventually in spite of what His Steveness wants. Look at the market position they find themselves in.
1. They are now, essentially, selling Dells in pretty cases. The legacy free nature of the current boxes will keep Windows off them for a year at best. Once Windows boots and runs most people will see Apples as pretty but overpriced Dells preloaded with OS X instead of Vista. Especially since the tales of OS X running on generic hardware will be widespread, even if many are total urban legend.
2. Their business model demands they sell at what everyone else in the PC industry considers insane profit margins.
3. Eventually everyone is going to realize that they ARE in the PC business.
4. They have to sustain massive R&D expenses for OS X and spread it over a fairly small number of unit sales compared to the Beast in Redmond.
Consider Point #2 in light of point #4. High unit costs + high profit markups. Ouch. Eventually at least one of those drags on sales will have to go. That only gives them a couple of options, all bad. Stagnate development on OS X to cut costs: die. Do some funky Open Source gambit: probably die. Adopt Windows: probably die. Do nothing: die slowly.
My complaint with this scheme, and Tor, is that they are essentially open proxies. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to pooch the acl lines on a Squid and leave it running a bit will know what happens next. One day you notice your bandwidth pegged at max and you scramble to fix it.
> Do you own a PS2? Nintendo DS? Or any console for that matter?
> If so welcome to the world of not necessarily being able to use your software/hardware in a way you'd like.
Which is WHY I haven't owned a console since the Atari2600. Atari tried that bullshit and got smacked down hard. If it is a computer I want to be able to program for it, buy software from whoever I want, etc.
And of course most consoles CAN be reprogrammed anyway. This latest generation might be the first ones that won't be hacked.
> But, like it or not, this hurts Apple. *You* might not think it hurts Apple, but the only > people in the position to *decide* that it hurts Apple - i.e., Apple - have decided that it > *does* hurt Apple. Whether it's because of business model or arbitrary decision, that's > their decision to make.
Like the subject says, watch me just so not care. It isn't my problem whether something is or isn't part of their business model and they don't get to enforce that crap on me. They SELL a software product and I'll do as I damned well please with it. If I were to go insane and want to run OS X I'd buy a copy off the shelf and then do whatever it took (probably download a totally different ISO it appears) to make it run on the hardware I selected for it. It is SOLD not licensed because I ignored the EULA. If it looks like a sale, it is a sale. Buying off the rack at Best Buy (or even the Apple store if they don't have a contract at the counter) is a sale and not a license. Copyright law would forbid me from selling copies or running it on more than one machine but nothing in the copyright laws says I can't install a program on whatever hardware I can get to run it. Nothing in copyright law says I can't reverse engineer it to figure out how to do that. The DMCA might forbid some of that, but that law seriously needs a fresh challenge.
Now if Apple doesn't like the situation they have a couple of choices:
1. Require real enforceable contracts like Radio Shack used to make people buying Trash80s sign.
> Should you listen in on NSA/CIA/DIA communications just because they are being > broadcast into your back yard?
Yes! If you think you have a chance of doing it and are 'into' that sort of thing you most certainly should try. If you succeed you should quietly notify the agency that their crypto is breakable. Because if you can break it the odds are that another intelligence agency somewhere can also break it. Peer reviewing our national security aparatus should be considered patriotic.
Ok, if we are going to have anti-trust laws on the books, now would be a perfect time to use them. If this isn't anti-competitive behaviour then let he who holds that position define what is.
This is on a par with Ford and Exxon agreeing that unless you are burning Exxon gas your Ford's engine will be capped at half it's rated horsepower.
Guys, get some education on how things work out in the big blue room. This isn't dangerous.
I'll clue you in, this is all about posturing. No, this bill won't pass and it isn't intended to pass. What it is intended to do is put political pressure on Google to counterbalance the polutical pressure China is putting on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.. Before, US companies really didn't have much choice, they were operating in China so the Chinese could lean hard on them to play ball. Bills like this are intended to provide cover, i.e. next time China wants to lean on em the US companies AND the Chinese government have to counterbalance the gain aganst the potential loss if they push Congress far enough they actually get serious next time.
Wouldn't be at all suprised to find Google or Microsoft behind this bill, of course in a very back room, back channel and totally deniable way. This is modern political theatre. Yes it is sleezy, underhanded, hypocritical and so on, but it happens to be the way the game is played.
Sounds like the only hope for watching hidef content for most of us is going to be praying for a crypto breakthrough. And it is just that sort of high demand that pushes a lot of breaks.
> Hell, go back to 2001, I remember knowing many people whose PC's ran awful slow when > running XP in Fisher Price mode, so they'd revert to the classic look and things were > fine until they had a slightly better PC a little later.
On the rare occasions I am forced to run Windows, I still turn off the Fisher Price mode. It blows goats and I'd bet good money Aero Glass will molest farm animals as well. Those morons write for morons and it shows. Of course OS X is also crap and don't even get me ranting about GNOME or KDE.
Goddamn, what has happened to user interfaces. They chew through ten times the resources they did a decade ago and suck. With a vector based desktop built on GL we should be able to do some stuff that actually makes a PC easier to use instead of looking like a rejected prop from Hackers.
And this story also blows. Good grief people, if you are planning on plunking the cash for a Vista upgrade buy a damned video card, they are under a hundred bux for a good one these days.
> This racism is frequently perpetrated on us white people not by people of different race, but by ourselves. We've > designed a society in which we are discriminating against ourselves. I think it's mostly as an apology for our long > years of discriminating against other races. But it's bullshit, and it has to stop.
A popular notion, but not correct. WE aren't doing any such thing. Elite Democrats (mostly rich/powerful socialists who just happen to be mostly white) are imposing this stuff as a way to DIVIDE us (us being the non rich non socialists) by race. They used their control of the media to force whites to accept it by dint of endless, unrebutted by refusing any opposing view airtime/columnspace, charges that anyone opposing them is a bigot. They were willing to accept the loss of many whites at the ballotbox though. The blacks bought in readily, not realizing the trap and now most live in shattered slums where once stood poor but proud and rising communities. Then they subverted the women's sufferage movement and again created a permamant divide with a dependent group voting solid for Democrats. Again with the trade unions, creating a spoils system where the few had great benefits that everyone knew could never be extended universally. And the unions made sure everyone knew which switch to pull in the voting booth to stay on the gravy train.
And it worked for about two generations, the Democratic Party was a majority of minorities. With total control over mass communications and the destruction of public education almost nobody could figure out the scam being pulled and those few had no way to tell very many other people. They divided and conquered in almost classic textbook fashion.
But all things have their season and now theirs is passing. The important thing now is to try to pick up the pieces they are leaving behind them and forge a single People from them.
> How many people would be up in arms about racism and discrimination if I were to offer up a $1000 whites-only > college scholarship?
Nobody would have time to get upset, it's illegal. But yes I'd like to see some challenges to the current perverted system. I find it hard to drive past a Curves! without stopping and trying to join. After all, feminists forced every all male instituition to go co-ed so it would be fun to find a pro-bono laywer and run their asses through the wringer. Only problem is it would just be a waste of time and money. That and I read somewhere the founder is a prolife conservative so it wouldn't exactly be hitting the NOW gang in the teeth... unless they were forced to jump in to defend, that WOULD be delicious.
> Secondly, Democrats in the late 50's and early 60's were extremely divided over civil > rights legislation.
True enough. The Civil Rights movement started out for good and just reasons. Rosa Parks finally got pissed and stood up for what was right, it wasn't some grand conspiracy by the Democratic Party. Dr. King's story is a bit more 'nuanced' than the official version we are all fed these days but even he was basically on the side of good. It was when the Democratic Party finally realized the political realignment that was possible and hijacked the movement and turned it into a political football that things went wrong. After that there was no more talk about equality, it was all about class struggle, dividing people into groups and making as many things as possible about skin color.
> The FBI 2004 Hate Crime Statistics indicate that about 63% of reported hate crimes with > known offenders are committed by whites. Does this mean that hate crime laws are applied > disproportionately against whites, or simply that more whites are committing hate crimes?
A perfect example that makes my point. Crime statistics for over a decade show that black on white violence happens far more often than white on black. But 63% of the so called 'hate crimes' are white on black? That would put a much larger (Don't have the exact stats handy but at least 2x, probably closer to 3x) percentage of white on black crime being labeled a 'hate crime'. Now take a look at the popular culture. You can't look at a Billboard chart without finding some idiot rapper 'singing' about offing whitey but unless you know some really underground media I'm not aware of there just ain't that much of that sort of thing going on in reverse. (stormfront.com excepted of course, but then they are asshats) The only explanation that has any hope of explaining the difference is that prosecuters tend to add a 'hate crime' to the list of charges when a white guy wins a barfight with a glack guy a lot more often than the reverse occurs.
> Try to tell Mr. Bush that you are neither with him nor with the terrorists and see what > he says.
Dunno, the NYT has gone way beyond that to lending aid and comfort to the terrorists and I don't see them in jail yet. Although I'd cheer if Bush would at least have the balls to have Gonzales file some charges. You guys seem to get off from deluding yourselves that Bushitler is going to oppress you guys just any minute now. Fact is most of ya wouldn't be worth it even if Bush really were Hitler reborn because you are useless raving moonbats leading your party to destruction.
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> I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge
> (I think) $599 for the commercial license.
Simple, there is nothing in Copyright law that allows a seller to control what private uses I put their work to. Copyright prohibits reproduction and public performance only without some other contractual agreement. So I probably couldn't timeshare the software but I can do whatever else I want with it, and no they don't have any claim to my own intellectual output by virtue of having used their software in developing it. If a vendor wants some other restrictions they need to enter into a legally binding contract. A college bookstore should be able to deal with pulling a contract off the back of the box and having a designated employee who could be authorized to sign for the store. Yes it is messy, but they want to change the normal accepted terms of trade so they get to carry the burden of inconvience.
And note that this is totally different from the GPL, it can be a shrinkwrap license. How? Because you don't have to accept it! Yes, it is true. Simply obey the restrictions imposed by Copyright and you are free to ignore the GPL. By doing any of the actions it discusses you have either accepted the GPL or committed felony copyright infringement. And that is the differnce, the GPL adds permissions you wouldn't have while all other EULAs are attempts to remove rights.
> And you've been around /. long enough to know what would happen, especially on the Apple section, hence -1
> Interesting Flamebait would be appropriate.
Thats why I did it. At least a few fanboys will be exposed to thoughts that haven't been hand selected for them by Steve and what the hell, as you noted I have been here awhile and have plenty of karma to burn. Since the karma cap went in ages ago there really isn't any reason NOT to stir things up once in awhile.
> This product that apple sells, includes the hardware, deal with it. You're the whiny bitch.
No, some products they sell includes hardware. They also sell boxed sets of OS X, probably intended for upgrades. I see nothing in the original intent behind Copyright that limits me from doing whatever the hell I want with those bits, including merging in 3rd party patch sets that will allow it to boot and run on generic hardware. The DMCA might say otherwise but it is immoral and every right thinking person should make a point of violating it as a matter of civil disobedience.
It all comes down to whether you believe software is sold or licensed. I hold that since the days when Radio Shack made you sign a dread EULA in the store before allowing any 25- or 26- products to leave the store, all software sold at retail is just that, sold. It is copyrighted, but the EULA is meaningless piffle which should be laughed at.
> But I don't understand the people who truly don't see what's immoral about, for example, running Mac OS X in a
> way that Apple expressly asks you not to.
Because I don't recognize their moral authority to tell me HOW to use their product. Their Copyright only gives them the right to control making copies. Yea I'd violate the letter of that if an iso appeared that would boot on my hardware simply because of curiosity. I wouldn't adopt it for daily use and certainly wouldn't use it at work without buying a copy. (Although until the first upgrade hits retail I'd probably have to buy the PPC copy and call it close enough.)
And I don't recognize any right for them to say their copyrighted work can ONLY be accessed on their brand of player. That is the same sort of bullshit arguments the MPAA and the DVD-CCA use to tell me I can't play DVDs I own on a DVD drive equipped PC I own because they refuse to bless a player for my preferred platform. By your logic I should just forego DVD on Linux or be a good lemming and install Windows. Wrong, I didn't 'license' my season sets of South Park, I BOUGHT copies and I'll read them wherever I damned well please and if I want to skip the trice damned commercials for Drawn Together and the Daily Show I will. And if I ever decided to install OS X I'd BUY a copy of it and do whatever I damned well wanted to with it as well and Steve could just go perform an improbable act of self procreation if he didn't like it. It is just a fscking product people, you don't have to join Steve'e cult and lose all sense of right and wrong.
What a lame bunch of whiny bitches they sound like.
Newsflash, OS X will be hacked to run on generic hardware because A) people want to do it and B) just because they can. Apple whining about it and trying to stop it only makes group B more motivated. Personally it won't matter for me because I doubt any of the hacked versions will run on AMD processors, but if it did I'd probably download it and have a look because the last version I saw was 10.0 and there aren't exactly a lot of Macs here in the wilderness of Southwest Louisiana. If I actually liked it I'd probably buy a copy just to be fair about it, even if Apple wouldn't officially support it.
But don't expect me to get all worked up in a big pity party for the idiots. I really don't see anything wrong with bootlegging a product that the publisher refuses to publish. Same way I WOULD have repurchased the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD to replace my aging VHS print..... but instead I have bootleg a DVD set because George Lucas won't sell them. (No, the remake isn't the same thing. Sorry, Han shot first.) Same principle, Apple refuses to sell the product so a certain mindset of people see it as a challenge to correct the flaw.
And no, artificially tying the product to their lackluster hardware offerings is NOT acceptable. Yes I said lackluster. Sure they are pretty but as PC hardware they just ain't all that. Cheap plastic cases with wimpy power supplies and little expansion for the desktop and useless one button laptops. Gimme a big manly box made of 2mil aluminum and a big ass stable power plant to start, then let me pick out a premium motherboard and memory and an drives of my choice. Why should the OS vendor get to make all of my hardware choices for me? And never forget the insane markup they get for their pretty but bland specced hardware.
> After paying for 3.1, 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP....
That really isn't a reason to hate M$ dude, look at the timeframe. Hell, I think I have bought more Linux sets. Lemme see here:
Yggdrasil three times, twice from "The CD-ROM Store" in Dallas, once direct from Yggdrasil Computing. Jeze, does that date my sorry butt, back then we had special stores selling these new fangled CD-ROMS! Not counting the various Walnut Creek assortments I bought.
Redhat 4.0, RedHat 5.1 (From a RH booth), RedHat 6.1, all boxed sets.
OpenBSD 3.5.
Ok, that is a tie assuming you were really stupid enough to buy ME. The point is that if you want the new shiny ya sometimes pay for it. In Free Software you pay to get the books and support the distro, with Microsoft you pay because it is proprietary software. (Or you bootleg like my poor ass did with DOS 4.01, DOS 5, DOS 6.xx and WfW 3.11. I managed to get a NFR copy of W95 cheap enough to pay for, and my laptop was bundled with W98SE so I haven't had to bookleg a Microsoft product since WfW.)
> Personally, I don't think Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with their release...
...at half the price of the Sony's console...
...that if it doesn't have DVR capabilities...
Me neither, but the severe shortages undermined the first to market advantage without doubt. Yes a lot of boxes will be sold between now and PS3 launch but we all know the magic of the "Golden Quarter" and they could have sold a lot more boxes had they been able to supply them.
> If the PS3 debuts in June at $400, it was a horrible launch...
No, if Sony pulls that off they probably win right there. But I'd agree they probably won't make that time or price. But they are smart enough to realize they damned well better have ample supply in the system by Black Friday 06 so that means they will start pushing boxes by late Sep no matter what else gets compromised to do it.
>
Only if you assume Sony is totally insane does that situation develop. They know what is at stake and will compete. Being a hundred over Xbox is acceptable, them being the new system but double would be fatal, thus not permitted.
>
None of this crop of consoles will be DVRs and I'd bet it doesn't happen on the next generation either. Everybody talks about it but it is simply improbable. PVR means that at any moment the system must be able to devote overhead to realtime streaming, and nowadays that means the potential for HD content bouncing around the bus. Plus there are no standards for the input. You would need co-marketing agreements with each satelite and cable provider to gain access to their content, remember it is all encrypted now.
> Yes, because there have been so many titles announced for the Revolution already.
Don't really care all that much myself. However based on trends going back a decade now it is fairly safe to assume Nintendo will quickly build a broad and deep catalog while Sony will focus on the male teen/young adult demographic again, as will Microsoft.
Because Xbox didn't sell much in Japan and neither does the 360 appear to be, Sony will have the advantage of having most independent Japanese development houses on their side and will probably rival Nintendo for sheer number of titles, assuming that their battle with Xbox doesn't turn into a massacre that drives 3rd party developers away. But beyond a certain minimum number, title count probably won't decide the issue between Xbox and Playstation. It will be critical for Nintendo though because they will need good coverage in every market segment NOT involved in the scorced earth war between Sony & Microsoft plus enough in that area to at least be seen as competitive.
Having not bothered with any console since the Atari2600, here is how I view the landscape.
Xbox 360
Pro: Out first, never discount the advantage of getting on shelves first.
Fairly solid design, nothing too daring.
Massive marketing push
Con: Fairly solid design, nothing too daring.
Early mover advantage all but negated by supply issues, Xmas '05 was a bust.
Only a DVD Drive
PS3
Pro: Backward compatibility with PS2 and PS1.
Proven ability to churn out titles appealing to key 16-24yo male demographic.
BlueRay, especially if it wins in the broader next gen DVD war.
Con: Late arrival
???: Cell. If it can be harnessed it will be a major plus, otherwise another Itanic fiasco.
Revolution
Pro: Widest range of software covering the most catagories.
Con: From teh prelim info available it appears to be woefully underpowered.
???: New input system is a total wildcard much like Cell.
I'd say Nintendo will survive this round simply because it will mostly be fighting for ground not coveted by the other two contenders. If the new input system permits new catagories of gaming the others can't port it could gain major ground.
However there really isn't room for both Xbox and the Playstation since they both target the same demographic and neither is likely to be able to slide into the media center/tivo market with their current generation hardware.
If Xbox suffers another lackluster second place finish to Sony it will be hard to convince the instituitional investors who hold vast quantities of Microsoft stock in pension plans to piss away billions more on a third try. Sony on the other hand can probably afford to lose a round and come back with another try so while the pressure is on Sony to deliver a knockout and end the war they probably can better survive a loss while for Microsoft it is probably "win or go home" time. Expect them to realize that and play for keeps, slashing prices at the first hint of erosion in sales, knowing this brief period before PS3 & Revolution launch is their best opportunity to lock in customers.
> > where are the holographic DVDs?
> Here:
> http://newtech.aurum3.com/content/view/58/18/
Sweet! But it does kinda support my original point. Maybe by the end of this year we will finally see the first product based on holographic tech. But notice this is "only" 300GB instead of the "terrabyte at first and sky's the limit" originally touted. But if they can even get this much shipping at anything like a sane price we really won't care about whether BD-ROM or HD-DVD 'win' their current pissing fight. BlueRay will be remembered as nice tech that was obsolete before it could gain acceptance. (HD-DVD doesn't even really count as new tech, just DVD with a blue laser.)
> yeah, computers aren't hundreds of thousands of times better on every front
> over the years or anything.
Yes they are. But they probably won't be hundreds of times better in five years, probably not in ten. They will continue their relentless improvement though. That is the point I was making, that when someone promises a single improvement that is hundreds of times better than current tech you should be sceptical because they rarely pan out, at least on the timescales being touted to attract investors.
Sure we will eventually move beyond hard drives. But remember when it was bubble memory that was THE next big thing. Didn't happen. This idea might pan out, it might not. Demonstrating a theory in a lab is a long way from a mass produced product. Lots of ideas never make the trip and of those that do the end result is often less impressive in product form than the initial press release. And by the time this one makes it from the labs to the shelves something might eclipse it.
Back to bubble memory, it had everything going for it. Only problem was traditional hard drive makers could crank out incremental improvements faster than anyone else could keep up. So hard drives went from a couple of megabytes to hundreds for half the price so fast all other storage technology at the time was swept aside before it could mature.
Seems every few months we get a story about a wonder just a few years down the road. Most never get here, and none on the original optimistic schedule.
Where are the holographics DVDs? A few years out, which is where they were a few years ago.
OLEDs are finally showing up on small displays but remember it was only a few years ago we were promised they would supplant Plasma and LCD in 'just a couple of years?' They might do it someday, but not this year.
And so on.
> I would like to hear from those who find this useful because I don't get the point yet.
One reason is to increase the hardware diversity available to Linux. If we can run on enough different hardware we can survive when Microsoft closes the traditional PC platform down to a glorified Xbox. Granted that Apple will probably beat Bill to that step but we might at least be able to make a co-existance deal with His Steveness.
Plus this might have some potential in and of itself. Think about it. Mac on Linux gives you Mac and Linux apps side by side. This is an Intel box so Wine, Crossover Office, VMWare and eventually Xen all provide ways to get Windows apps into the mix.
> If apple switched to Windows they would strictly be overpriced hardware.
You mean like the iPod is just an overpriced mp3 player? Hasn't stopped Apple from selling at huge margins based on a 'brand experience.' Same way Nike is just selling some fucking shoes.
But no, I doubt Apple is considering switching to Windows yet. But it will probably happen eventually in spite of what His Steveness wants. Look at the market position they find themselves in.
1. They are now, essentially, selling Dells in pretty cases. The legacy free nature of the current boxes will keep Windows off them for a year at best. Once Windows boots and runs most people will see Apples as pretty but overpriced Dells preloaded with OS X instead of Vista. Especially since the tales of OS X running on generic hardware will be widespread, even if many are total urban legend.
2. Their business model demands they sell at what everyone else in the PC industry considers insane profit margins.
3. Eventually everyone is going to realize that they ARE in the PC business.
4. They have to sustain massive R&D expenses for OS X and spread it over a fairly small number of unit sales compared to the Beast in Redmond.
Consider Point #2 in light of point #4. High unit costs + high profit markups. Ouch. Eventually at least one of those drags on sales will have to go. That only gives them a couple of options, all bad. Stagnate development on OS X to cut costs: die. Do some funky Open Source gambit: probably die. Adopt Windows: probably die. Do nothing: die slowly.
My complaint with this scheme, and Tor, is that they are essentially open proxies. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to pooch the acl lines on a Squid and leave it running a bit will know what happens next. One day you notice your bandwidth pegged at max and you scramble to fix it.
Kaboom! ran on the Atari 2600. Kaboom! was written by Larry Kaplan and David Crane for Activision.
> Do you own a PS2? Nintendo DS? Or any console for that matter?
> If so welcome to the world of not necessarily being able to use your software/hardware in a way you'd like.
Which is WHY I haven't owned a console since the Atari2600. Atari tried that bullshit and got smacked down hard. If it is a computer I want to be able to program for it, buy software from whoever I want, etc.
And of course most consoles CAN be reprogrammed anyway. This latest generation might be the first ones that won't be hacked.
> But, like it or not, this hurts Apple. *You* might not think it hurts Apple, but the only
> people in the position to *decide* that it hurts Apple - i.e., Apple - have decided that it
> *does* hurt Apple. Whether it's because of business model or arbitrary decision, that's
> their decision to make.
Like the subject says, watch me just so not care. It isn't my problem whether something is or isn't part of their business model and they don't get to enforce that crap on me. They SELL a software product and I'll do as I damned well please with it. If I were to go insane and want to run OS X I'd buy a copy off the shelf and then do whatever it took (probably download a totally different ISO it appears) to make it run on the hardware I selected for it. It is SOLD not licensed because I ignored the EULA. If it looks like a sale, it is a sale. Buying off the rack at Best Buy (or even the Apple store if they don't have a contract at the counter) is a sale and not a license. Copyright law would forbid me from selling copies or running it on more than one machine but nothing in the copyright laws says I can't install a program on whatever hardware I can get to run it. Nothing in copyright law says I can't reverse engineer it to figure out how to do that. The DMCA might forbid some of that, but that law seriously needs a fresh challenge.
Now if Apple doesn't like the situation they have a couple of choices:
1. Require real enforceable contracts like Radio Shack used to make people buying Trash80s sign.
2. Stop selling retail.
3. STFU and deal with it.
> Should you listen in on NSA/CIA/DIA communications just because they are being
> broadcast into your back yard?
Yes! If you think you have a chance of doing it and are 'into' that sort of thing you most certainly should try. If you succeed you should quietly notify the agency that their crypto is breakable. Because if you can break it the odds are that another intelligence agency somewhere can also break it. Peer reviewing our national security aparatus should be considered patriotic.
Ok, if we are going to have anti-trust laws on the books, now would be a perfect time to use them. If this isn't anti-competitive behaviour then let he who holds that position define what is.
This is on a par with Ford and Exxon agreeing that unless you are burning Exxon gas your Ford's engine will be capped at half it's rated horsepower.
Guys, get some education on how things work out in the big blue room. This isn't dangerous.
I'll clue you in, this is all about posturing. No, this bill won't pass and it isn't intended to pass. What it is intended to do is put political pressure on Google to counterbalance the polutical pressure China is putting on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.. Before, US companies really didn't have much choice, they were operating in China so the Chinese could lean hard on them to play ball. Bills like this are intended to provide cover, i.e. next time China wants to lean on em the US companies AND the Chinese government have to counterbalance the gain aganst the potential loss if they push Congress far enough they actually get serious next time.
Wouldn't be at all suprised to find Google or Microsoft behind this bill, of course in a very back room, back channel and totally deniable way. This is modern political theatre. Yes it is sleezy, underhanded, hypocritical and so on, but it happens to be the way the game is played.
Sounds like the only hope for watching hidef content for most of us is going to be praying for a crypto breakthrough. And it is just that sort of high demand that pushes a lot of breaks.
> Hell, go back to 2001, I remember knowing many people whose PC's ran awful slow when
> running XP in Fisher Price mode, so they'd revert to the classic look and things were
> fine until they had a slightly better PC a little later.
On the rare occasions I am forced to run Windows, I still turn off the Fisher Price mode. It blows goats and I'd bet good money Aero Glass will molest farm animals as well. Those morons write for morons and it shows. Of course OS X is also crap and don't even get me ranting about GNOME or KDE.
Goddamn, what has happened to user interfaces. They chew through ten times the resources they did a decade ago and suck. With a vector based desktop built on GL we should be able to do some stuff that actually makes a PC easier to use instead of looking like a rejected prop from Hackers.
And this story also blows. Good grief people, if you are planning on plunking the cash for a Vista upgrade buy a damned video card, they are under a hundred bux for a good one these days.
> This racism is frequently perpetrated on us white people not by people of different race, but by ourselves. We've
> designed a society in which we are discriminating against ourselves. I think it's mostly as an apology for our long
> years of discriminating against other races. But it's bullshit, and it has to stop.
A popular notion, but not correct. WE aren't doing any such thing. Elite Democrats (mostly rich/powerful socialists who just happen to be mostly white) are imposing this stuff as a way to DIVIDE us (us being the non rich non socialists) by race. They used their control of the media to force whites to accept it by dint of endless, unrebutted by refusing any opposing view airtime/columnspace, charges that anyone opposing them is a bigot. They were willing to accept the loss of many whites at the ballotbox though. The blacks bought in readily, not realizing the trap and now most live in shattered slums where once stood poor but proud and rising communities. Then they subverted the women's sufferage movement and again created a permamant divide with a dependent group voting solid for Democrats. Again with the trade unions, creating a spoils system where the few had great benefits that everyone knew could never be extended universally. And the unions made sure everyone knew which switch to pull in the voting booth to stay on the gravy train.
And it worked for about two generations, the Democratic Party was a majority of minorities. With total control over mass communications and the destruction of public education almost nobody could figure out the scam being pulled and those few had no way to tell very many other people. They divided and conquered in almost classic textbook fashion.
But all things have their season and now theirs is passing. The important thing now is to try to pick up the pieces they are leaving behind them and forge a single People from them.
> How many people would be up in arms about racism and discrimination if I were to offer up a $1000 whites-only
> college scholarship?
Nobody would have time to get upset, it's illegal. But yes I'd like to see some challenges to the current perverted system. I find it hard to drive past a Curves! without stopping and trying to join. After all, feminists forced every all male instituition to go co-ed so it would be fun to find a pro-bono laywer and run their asses through the wringer. Only problem is it would just be a waste of time and money. That and I read somewhere the founder is a prolife conservative so it wouldn't exactly be hitting the NOW gang in the teeth... unless they were forced to jump in to defend, that WOULD be delicious.
> Secondly, Democrats in the late 50's and early 60's were extremely divided over civil
> rights legislation.
True enough. The Civil Rights movement started out for good and just reasons. Rosa Parks finally got pissed and stood up for what was right, it wasn't some grand conspiracy by the Democratic Party. Dr. King's story is a bit more 'nuanced' than the official version we are all fed these days but even he was basically on the side of good. It was when the Democratic Party finally realized the political realignment that was possible and hijacked the movement and turned it into a political football that things went wrong. After that there was no more talk about equality, it was all about class struggle, dividing people into groups and making as many things as possible about skin color.
> The FBI 2004 Hate Crime Statistics indicate that about 63% of reported hate crimes with
> known offenders are committed by whites. Does this mean that hate crime laws are applied
> disproportionately against whites, or simply that more whites are committing hate crimes?
A perfect example that makes my point. Crime statistics for over a decade show that black on white violence happens far more often than white on black. But 63% of the so called 'hate crimes' are white on black? That would put a much larger (Don't have the exact stats handy but at least 2x, probably closer to 3x) percentage of white on black crime being labeled a 'hate crime'. Now take a look at the popular culture. You can't look at a Billboard chart without finding some idiot rapper 'singing' about offing whitey but unless you know some really underground media I'm not aware of there just ain't that much of that sort of thing going on in reverse. (stormfront.com excepted of course, but then they are asshats) The only explanation that has any hope of explaining the difference is that prosecuters tend to add a 'hate crime' to the list of charges when a white guy wins a barfight with a glack guy a lot more often than the reverse occurs.
> Try to tell Mr. Bush that you are neither with him nor with the terrorists and see what
> he says.
Dunno, the NYT has gone way beyond that to lending aid and comfort to the terrorists and I don't see them in jail yet. Although I'd cheer if Bush would at least have the balls to have Gonzales file some charges. You guys seem to get off from deluding yourselves that Bushitler is going to oppress you guys just any minute now. Fact is most of ya wouldn't be worth it even if Bush really were Hitler reborn because you are useless raving moonbats leading your party to destruction.