The fact we are politely discussing the merits of this proposal instead of laughing at and/or preparing boiling oil for the idiots responsible shows we have lost the Republic our mighty forebearers gave us in trust.
The idea that a Free People would meekly submit to some pinheads who will tell us what color we can paint our cars is laughable. So obviously this, among hundreds equally insane examples, proves we are no longer such a nation.
Amen to that. 2MB ROM/2MB RAM and you could run useful apps on a machine powered by AAA cells. Later incarnations could run web browsers in amounts of ram that GNOME can barely run a clock applet in.
Seriously. Look at a Nokia N series tablet. The first one had 128MB Flash and 64MB RAM. That should be enough to run a wed browser, right? Nope. Moz collapses in a sweaty heap of swap thrashing after a couple of pageviews and reboots the whole machine. Linux apps falling over and triggering reboots. How far we have fallen.
From a cold boot with just an xterm to run free in and you are already close to swapping.
I can remember running Netscape on a 486/100 with 32MB of RAM and having it snappy. Of course to be fair a typical page didn't require a hundred plus separate elements to be loaded in either.
> There is simply no way to recalculate all that in a way that closed source equivalent > functionality / capabilities comes out cheaper, without using pirated software.
Oh that I won't argue. I'd even argue that you would probably pay more than OSS even by going pirate just because you still need more support manpower, beefier hardware, virus scanners, etc. It was only the magnitude of the annual number that sounded a bit high.
> I am not even sure where I would find a licensed copy of windows server, let alone any > other common advanced server apps.
Microsoft doesn't have a local office? Seriously, if you are in a country where the piracy rate is that high you probably wouldn't have to worry unless you are high enough profile to made an example of. Microsoft knows people will pirate in certain parts of the world and is just waiting for those places to get a pot to piss in first before they expect to cash in.
> One competent full time IT person to do all the above (chances I would need way more) > if I could find them, would run me an easy $80,000 US to start per year.
Eh? Just where in Latin America are ya at? Last I heard most of that area has a pretty good cost of living so if a MS server herder is starting at $80K USD mebe I should learn a new language and escape the Obamanation while I still can.... before the bastard builds himself an Iron Curtain.
But I thought the argument in favor of MS infrastructure was you could use cheap trained MCSE seals instead of real admins that cost serious coin.:)
I want to know more about that number. It isn't passing the smell test from here. With your figure of around thirty seats that works out to over 8K per seat. You claim 1K in savings on the client software leaving over 7K per seat worth of server expense. Not on just the typical corporate MS stuff like Exchange, SMS, etc. Not even on saved hardware expense. Are you counting not buying some insanely expensive gold plated vertical law office suite that you found an OS replacement for?
> Especially when it looks like you specifically picked machines you knew wouldn't have problems?
Amazing how that works. If you are planning on running an operating system you CHECK for compatibility before you buy it. What an amazing concept. Or you could just buy a preloaded system and have zero problems.
I'm really tired of this recurring notion that linux won't be ready for the desktop/ready for the masses, etc until:
1. Every PC and every oddball Winprinter is 100% supported out of the box on every distribution.
2. Every application ever written for Windows either runs flawlessly or has a 100% function for function, menu for menu cloned native app.
3. Looks and feels exactly like the whiner's favorite version of Windows (or sometimes OS X). Best if it can switch between Win9x, Win2K, WinXP, Vista and OSX look and feel. See above about the 100% exact requirement.
And of course if somebody did spend a billion giving Linux all these things the same whiners would then spin about and say "Why should I switch, it's just like the Windows that comes with every computer for free."
>..just explain to the owner that you have certain ethical standards..
That will make you sound like a loser. Try "you aren't paying me enough risk getting raped in a Federal prison" and they will probably realize they ain't likely to talk you into looking the other way. It isn't ethics, it's self preservation. Even if you are a total anarchist morally opposed to copyrights you happen to live in a country where violating copyright law can get you sent to prison so if you are smart you follow the law in any job where the potential for a BSA audit is measurable.
> Microsoft is not necessarily screwed if subnotebooks with an ARM CPU take off.
Oh but they are. You are right that Windows Mobile has been available for years.... and pretty much ignored outside a losing percentage of the cell phone market. They key takeaway from examining the current PC marketplace is that few customers LIKE Windows. They use it because a) they don't know any better or b) depend on one or more preexisting Windows only applications. Even if they port Windows 7 to ARM it won't help them because the Windows NT porting experience proved that few ISVs can or will port.
So if Linux and Windows end up competing on ARM it won't be pretty for Microsoft. Linux will have the full 20K strong repo going up against a pretty much blank slate on Windows-ARM. It would take several years of DOJ arousing bullying and strongarming (haha) to get even a fraction of the third party library ported. And for what? So they can give away Windows-ARM or sell it for $10 a copy at best?
Microsoft has won this round of the netbook war because a) they essentially resurrected XP and gave it away and more importantly b) the netbook game evolved UP to the $400-$500 pricepoints where they are close to notebooks and notebooks are expected to come with Windows. The coming ARM second wave is intended to drive DOWN the pricepoint chart into the $100-$200 range ASUS was talking about when the EEE701 was first being pitched. Even at the $32 (firstworld) OEM price of XP for netbooks Windows is a non starter in machines intended to RETAIL for $200 or less. A netbook selling in Best Buy for $199.95 left the dock in China for no more than $130 and probably closer to $100. Find room on that bill of materials for a $32 component.
The only remaining question is whether ARM can provide a big enough advantage to claw out a market share with Intel and Microsoft bringing every dirty trick to bear they can think of. Because ARM is a existential threat to both of em. ARM needs to provide a 'good enough' computing experience compared to Atom AND either a crapload more run time in the same weight/performance class or be at least %50 cheaper in the same class. We will see.
> My estimate is that $399 would more correctly represent the value for a full version of MacOS X that can be installed on any computer.
Except that can't be so. Apple will sell you a Mac MIni for $599 with a full copy of OS X. There is several hundred dollars of value in the hardware plus the Apple insane profit margin. So the value of the software simply can't be $399. You could BUY a Mini and transfer the license to a real computer and then resell the Mini loaded with MythTV. The difference between the Mini as Apple sold it and what the fair market value of the MiniMyth is the fair market value of OS X. And yes it's legal. Remember, EULAs are rubbish and copyright law doesn't grant a copyright holder the right to bind a copyrighted work to a piece of unrelated hardware.
As I say above, Apple wants to have it both ways. And I'm trying to push em into a logic trap. If Apple admits the boxes are only upgrades they void a minor but useful argument they have been using to compete with Windows with it's $399 MSRP for Vista Ultimate. But if they do THAT it opens up a very valid next question. If those boxes are upgrades, what IS the price for OS X? The trap is there isn't any answer they can give taht doesn't bone them.
Think about it. If they adopt your $399 price they do a lot more than just lose the price argument with Vista. The second they put a price on it somebody will do the one thing Apple doesn't want, offer to buy it. So they do what they are doing, fuzz the issue and have it both ways and neither. Those boxes are and aren't upgrades.
> So, hacking MacOS/X onto a non-Apple computer is a non-starter for most of the people MacOS/X is targetted at.
Unless you fall into several broad catagories of user.
1. Someone who wants to run OS X on a normal desktop for less than $2499. Hint for Apple: $2499 as a STARTING PRICE for a basic tower PC is so far out of the ballpark you guys apparent't aren't even trying to find the ballpark.
2. Someone who want to run OS X on a laptop for less than $999 and/or wants to run it on a netbook. Hint for Apple: $999 for a laptop is now about midrange, thus excluding about half of the market.
3. Someone who has a hardware requirement not met by the very limited offerings offered by one single vendor. And the one vendor, for reasons not clearly understood, has big freaking holes in their product line apparently intended to keep OS X market share down.
> On the other hand if you start with a list of requirements and find both a mac and a PC
to fit that list the mac will often end up far more expensive..
Exactly. Raise your hand if you NEED a Xeon with ECC memory on your desktop..... and you aren't a a very narrow band of major scientist, engineer, etc. who need lots of throbbing power and yet don't have access to a compute cluster. Almost by definition Apple has restricted their desktops to people spending OPM (and where the other people are idiots) or people with more money than brains.
The Mini is just a sad joke and the i* stuff is all in one crap about as expandable, customizable, etc as a toaster where you upgrade by forklifting in a whole new stack of machines. And people wonder why Apple's corporate penetration is non-existent. Corporations will throw a couple to the art dept if they bitch and whine enough, but that's it.
It's almost like Apple WANTS to keep the Mac a small exclusive club. Which is the truth. Apple is selling a premium brand experience and if it ever threatened to become mainstream the value would disappear.
> Minimum System Requirements > Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
Yea and a boxed copy of Vista lists the hardware requirements for it too, doesn't make it an upgrade. Hint, an upgrade is linked to a specific set of prior (or sometimes competing) software products. Hardware requirements are the minimums needed to use the software. For example Vista Home Basic says it requires an 800Mhz CPU. Doesn't mean it won't install on a 700, just that you can't bitch at Microsoft support when you find oou they were actually overly optimistic. Now Apple won't support you if you install on anything that isn't theirs but that is a support issue not a legal one. Hint: a EULA is legally meaningless in most jurisdictions. Copyright law has nothing about a right to tie software to possession of the vendor's hardware.
> Err, They err, they do have UPGRADE written on the boxes.
Well I live in flyover country so haven't seen an actual BOX in several years. It didn't say UPGRADE then. And right now I'm looking at Apple's store and the box does NOT say upgrade. The ad copy does not say upgrade anywhere. The requirements do not list which previous versions of OS X are required to qualify for this 'upgrade' you believe they are selling. Nope, unless the physical boxes actually differ from what Apple depicts at their own store if I bought one I'd be buying a full legal copy of OS X and could do whatever I wanted with it. Not that I would, I'm a geek and prefer the company of the Penguin flock to the mindless swarms of the Mac Zealots.
> The $130 doesn't get you an OS that will run on commodity hardware.
Yes it will, you just have to hack around the DRM a bit and be careful about what hardware you install it on. The second part is no different than when I carefully research a new PC intended to run Linux.
Sorry, Apple can't have it both ways. On the one hand they claim the boxed copies of OS X aren't 'upgrade' copies, that they are full versions when they compare to the outrageous full retail prices for Windows. But as soon as somebody wants to install OS X on commodity hardware and the laughter about Apple's claim to the right to restrict their seperately boxed OS to Apple hardware dies out some Zealot pulls out the "But those boxes are just an upgrade so you aren't just ignoring the EULA you are a pirate." line. Make your minds up once and for all and either put "UPGRADE" on the boxes or shut up when people install em on whatever they want.
> Abortion is an issue more complicated than "women's rights!" because the question > also involes whether the fetus is "alive"/a person/etc or not.
Nope. It was decided because a majority wanted to legalize abortion. Period. After that it was just coming up with some bullcrap to justify that decision. The Constitution says nothing about abortion. Every doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath at the time of the writing of the document swore NOT to be involved in the practice so the Founders certainly were aware of the concept. So since they knew of it and failed to enumerate it as a power of the Federal government there should be zero argument that the 10th Amendment makes it an issue for the States.
Had they been actually doing their job the ruling would have consisted of the following and nothing more:
"The only guidance the Constitution provides is mentioning "Born or naturalized" in relation to citizenship. Thus the Constitution implies Birth as the dividing line between having rights and not having them. Therefore this Court has no grounds to rule that the States must forbid abortion. Since a fetus is thus not a person for purposes of Federal Law and the Constitution is silent on the issue the 10th Amendment reserves the regulation of abortion to the States and thus this Court has no power to require a State to permit, forbid or otherwise control the availibility, price or anything else related to the practice."
"If Congress is unhappy with this ruling it is free to begin the Amendment process. This Court will of course abide by any change lawfully made to the Constitution."
> Most people don't even realize that R v. W was decided based on the issue of -privacy-. What a farce!
Especially since privacy isn't a Right mentioned at any point in the document. Earlier 'rulings' created that one.
> All someone has to do is set up a Certificate Authority and they can basically > construct their own private internet from the ground up.
Not exactly. You are still asking each website to adopt the system, not recreating every popular site. So no you couldn't have an alternate Wikipedia unless you forked their content onto your own servers. The difference is that the version offered by the new port would be required to be properly tagged for content. They could even have porn, just as long as every bit was tagged in the http response before the content so teh browser could refuse to accept content it has been programmed to accept.
The big difference in my idea over PICS is the requirement for certs and keys implying revocation for intentionally setting the tags to let filth get to people who shouldd't get it.
And psst. One noteworthy side effect. Since the whole scheme falls apart without reliable end to end crypto on every single pageview it eliminates most of the usefulness of a government mandated filter at the ISP level. Remember, the vilest rotgut porn COULD be served over this protocol, so long as it is tagged correctly. Acceptable content is purely a contract between the server and client.
> except that blocking port 80 in that scenario is superfluous.
To prevent them simply launching an unrestricted Firefox from a USB key. Or undermining the Windows help system which is these days largly a web browser, etc.
> One has to wonder though if google would pass their test and if not how useful their safe internet would be.
http://www.google.com/ certainly wouldn't pass. If Google didn't offer up a clean search on the alternate port somebody else would certainly fill the hole in the marketplace.
And a few addendums to my original post.
A new protocol name would be required to avoid pahing to keep specifying the port number in URLs. Perhaps shttp: for SafeHTTP? And the browser would have to explicitly know to switch cert chains based on the https or shttp protocol. This whole scheme could be done in a single RFC and a few man hours of hacking on Firefox to produce a proof of concept browser. The rest would be political and marketing to get enough sites to sign on.
And that last part is the sticking point. Others have tried, remember my mention of IE supporting a system to put ratings in the headers? Nobody does. So who would buy a new ssl cert and open up an alternate port unless a whole heck of a lot of political pressure came crashing down.
I'm a libertarian and unless the government mandated this scheme I would actually like to see it done. Got grand kids about to be old enough to use the Internet. And on the current Internet the undesirable stuff comes looking for you whether you are looking for it or not.
How about a counter proposal. Leave port 80 just like it is. The people who want a 'cleaned kid friendly Internet' can establish an alternate port where such a thing would be delivered. Do it like this:
Rule one: all servers running on this new port have to be doing https.
Rule two: all certs will use an entirely new chain of trust established by the consortium doing this new safe net. They condition the server keys on a site obeying whatever content rules they put out, revoking the keys of sites who go rogue.
Rule three: A mandatory set of tags describing the content on each page so parents can adjust their browser accordingly to their views. Such a system already exists in IE and could exist in others once someone actually began using the stuff. After all a browser update will probably be required to get the new root certs installed anyway.
Then it is just a matter of blocking port 80 on kids computers. Best done at the AP/router.
> I have had problems with this site in konqueror at various times, webkit and opera.
I am having problems right now with this site. I'm running Fedora 10 with all updates applied. I can't read messages from the system, I just get a blank screen. They work at home on an older Firefox. For some reason posting a comment, in the idle section only, sometimes forces typing the post in a tall narrow entry field perhaps twenty characters wide.
The Javascript is so slow I get dialog boxes asking whether to stop the script. I get em on this slow POS at work and on my almost modern 64bit machine at home. Any machine new enough to have an Athlon64 CPU should be able to display slashdot's homepage.
It is clear the slashdot editors run Windows/Mac machines and never view their site on a Linux based machine or they would have at least addressed the Javascript problems.
For the readers educated in government schools.... Some might get some of this eventually.
The difference is night and day. In the Rule of Men whatever the current President/King/Emperor/etc says is Law. This is basically what we now have, Constituition be damned, if The Supremes say it it is Law and they aren't bound by any external force or agreement. And we have been conditioned to accept this as legitimate justice.
With the Rule of Law the laws are written down ahead of time and everyone knows what the laws are and are bound to them. Yes they can be changed but you actually have to change them, and you generally aren't allowed to make a retroactive change. Changing the Constituition itself is permissible but the procedure was intentionally made difficult to protect against momentary passions.
So for example Roe v Wade was clearly a violation. If as a country we want the Federal government to take a position one way or the other on the issue we should have had to amend the Constituition. That would have forced a huge messy public debate on the issue and we would have settled the issue back in the 1970's and not still be fighting it out now. The way it is now everyone realizes that five Supremes ARE the law so both sides fight to get five of theirs on, thus the issue hinges of the power balance of the day.. i.e. on the MEN who hold the office not the LAW they uphold.
The fact we all sat waiting for the Supremes to rule in the Keller decision, and that the outcome was actually in doubt, proves we have exchanged the Rule of Law for the Rule of Men. No scholar of the English language as used to write the 2nd Amendment disputes the clear meaning of the words. No scholar of the men who wrote the words dispute the meaning they intended the words to have. Yet we waited patiently for the Nine Robed Eminences to pronounce their verdict that, by a slim 5-4 decision, the Law really would be upheld.... for now. One vacancy and we could have five who believe differently. If the Rule of Law still held every Justice who dissented would have been removed on the grounds of either failing to exhibit basic English Comprehension or willful refusal to carry out their Oath.
Again, if We the People through our elected Representitives and by following the Law governing Amendments want to remove or tweak the 2nd we have that power. But to pretend it simply doesn't exist anymore because the Constituition 'Lives' destroys the Rule of Law.
The idea that the Rule of Law had to prevail over the Rule of Men was probably the highest achievement of the Western system of thought. None of the rest is possible to keep without it. It is one of the central ideas encoded in the Arthur legends it goes back so far and is embedded so deep in our culture. It required generations of control over government schools to produce a population clueless enough to renounce that inheritance.
> When you're not held to a constant literal meaning of law, then the law simply > means whatever the interpreter wants it to mean and whatever > they can get away with through that interpretation.
Or more simply, we exchanged the Rule of Law for the Rule of Men.
> casting off the idea of race as a cultural determinant..
But I thought we just elected a POTUS almost entirely based on his biracial itentity.
"All Men are Created Equal" is such a dead white men idea I'm suprised he wasn't booed from the stage for pushing such crimethink propaganda. Guess there is some hope for our species after all.
Except for the built in BASIC on the Picaxe the AVRs have a lot going for em. I have also pondered the idea of building a low tech computer just to see how much could be done on something that would bring the term 'low power' back down to Model 100 levels and perhaps even finally surpass 1980's tech.
You can get MRAM in the same package as the old school SRAM and some of the AVRs have an external memory interface that appears compatible. So that would allow some really deep sleeping, just push everything out of the on chip RAM and kill all power, with none of the bother associated with flash like write count limits or worrying about the time/power to copy everything in/out. If you totally kill power you couldn't use the onboard RTC but that could go on the i2c bus with a self contained button cell like on a real laptop.
If you could keep the display and input device power onsumption low enough alternative power could really be useful. Think solar powered information kiosks for example. You could run them off power harvested from street lights. No backup battery to replace, totally sealed agsinst the elements and abuse. But nobody thinks low tech like this, any proposed project has to be x86, run Windows etc. Or if somebody is really thinking outside the box they would propose an ARM running Linux or WinCE and again be consuming ten or more times the power than an AVR and a mono LCD just to run the backlight on a color TFT lcd display.
> The project would save substantial amounts of money and would provide a flexible, extensible machine for children to wander and learn.
Except nobody will buy them unless they run Windows. Microsoft will see to that. Negroponte probably realized that from the start which is why he allowed the Sugar fiasco. He didn't care how impractical/avant garde/experimental Sugar was since it was never going to actually ship. The whole effort was to leverage a good price for Windows.
Between the "The children need to learn Windows because that is what they will need in the real world" FUD and the bribery of government officials Linux has no chance of deployment in the 3th world in any sort of top down way. Remember, every OLPC proposed deployment is to a 3rd world pesthole and the #1 reason for being a 3rd world pesthole in the first place is having a corrupt government. If pengiuns are to have a shot it has to bubble up from below, under the radar of Microsoft away from teh influence of their ability to drop a briefcases of cash on the right official's desk.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact we are politely discussing the merits of this proposal instead of laughing at and/or preparing boiling oil for the idiots responsible shows we have lost the Republic our mighty forebearers gave us in trust.
The idea that a Free People would meekly submit to some pinheads who will tell us what color we can paint our cars is laughable. So obviously this, among hundreds equally insane examples, proves we are no longer such a nation.
> RIP PalmOS
Amen to that. 2MB ROM/2MB RAM and you could run useful apps on a machine powered by AAA cells. Later incarnations could run web browsers in amounts of ram that GNOME can barely run a clock applet in.
Seriously. Look at a Nokia N series tablet. The first one had 128MB Flash and 64MB RAM. That should be enough to run a wed browser, right? Nope. Moz collapses in a sweaty heap of swap thrashing after a couple of pageviews and reboots the whole machine. Linux apps falling over and triggering reboots. How far we have fallen.
From a cold boot with just an xterm to run free in and you are already close to swapping.
I can remember running Netscape on a 486/100 with 32MB of RAM and having it snappy. Of course to be fair a typical page didn't require a hundred plus separate elements to be loaded in either.
> There is simply no way to recalculate all that in a way that closed source equivalent
> functionality / capabilities comes out cheaper, without using pirated software.
Oh that I won't argue. I'd even argue that you would probably pay more than OSS even by going pirate just because you still need more support manpower, beefier hardware, virus scanners, etc. It was only the magnitude of the annual number that sounded a bit high.
> I am not even sure where I would find a licensed copy of windows server, let alone any
> other common advanced server apps.
Microsoft doesn't have a local office? Seriously, if you are in a country where the piracy rate is that high you probably wouldn't have to worry unless you are high enough profile to made an example of. Microsoft knows people will pirate in certain parts of the world and is just waiting for those places to get a pot to piss in first before they expect to cash in.
> One competent full time IT person to do all the above (chances I would need way more)
> if I could find them, would run me an easy $80,000 US to start per year.
Eh? Just where in Latin America are ya at? Last I heard most of that area has a pretty good cost of living so if a MS server herder is starting at $80K USD mebe I should learn a new language and escape the Obamanation while I still can.... before the bastard builds himself an Iron Curtain.
But I thought the argument in favor of MS infrastructure was you could use cheap trained MCSE seals instead of real admins that cost serious coin. :)
> I save over $250,000 a year
I want to know more about that number. It isn't passing the smell test from here. With your figure of around thirty seats that works out to over 8K per seat. You claim 1K in savings on the client software leaving over 7K per seat worth of server expense. Not on just the typical corporate MS stuff like Exchange, SMS, etc. Not even on saved hardware expense. Are you counting not buying some insanely expensive gold plated vertical law office suite that you found an OS replacement for?
> Especially when it looks like you specifically picked machines you knew wouldn't have problems?
Amazing how that works. If you are planning on running an operating system you CHECK for compatibility before you buy it. What an amazing concept. Or you could just buy a preloaded system and have zero problems.
I'm really tired of this recurring notion that linux won't be ready for the desktop/ready for the masses, etc until:
1. Every PC and every oddball Winprinter is 100% supported out of the box on every distribution.
2. Every application ever written for Windows either runs flawlessly or has a 100% function for function, menu for menu cloned native app.
3. Looks and feels exactly like the whiner's favorite version of Windows (or sometimes OS X). Best if it can switch between Win9x, Win2K, WinXP, Vista and OSX look and feel. See above about the 100% exact requirement.
And of course if somebody did spend a billion giving Linux all these things the same whiners would then spin about and say "Why should I switch, it's just like the Windows that comes with every computer for free."
> ..just explain to the owner that you have certain ethical standards..
That will make you sound like a loser. Try "you aren't paying me enough risk getting raped in a Federal prison" and they will probably realize they ain't likely to talk you into looking the other way. It isn't ethics, it's self preservation. Even if you are a total anarchist morally opposed to copyrights you happen to live in a country where violating copyright law can get you sent to prison so if you are smart you follow the law in any job where the potential for a BSA audit is measurable.
> Microsoft is not necessarily screwed if subnotebooks with an ARM CPU take off.
Oh but they are. You are right that Windows Mobile has been available for years.... and pretty much ignored outside a losing percentage of the cell phone market. They key takeaway from examining the current PC marketplace is that few customers LIKE Windows. They use it because a) they don't know any better or b) depend on one or more preexisting Windows only applications. Even if they port Windows 7 to ARM it won't help them because the Windows NT porting experience proved that few ISVs can or will port.
So if Linux and Windows end up competing on ARM it won't be pretty for Microsoft. Linux will have the full 20K strong repo going up against a pretty much blank slate on Windows-ARM. It would take several years of DOJ arousing bullying and strongarming (haha) to get even a fraction of the third party library ported. And for what? So they can give away Windows-ARM or sell it for $10 a copy at best?
Microsoft has won this round of the netbook war because a) they essentially resurrected XP and gave it away and more importantly b) the netbook game evolved UP to the $400-$500 pricepoints where they are close to notebooks and notebooks are expected to come with Windows. The coming ARM second wave is intended to drive DOWN the pricepoint chart into the $100-$200 range ASUS was talking about when the EEE701 was first being pitched. Even at the $32 (firstworld) OEM price of XP for netbooks Windows is a non starter in machines intended to RETAIL for $200 or less. A netbook selling in Best Buy for $199.95 left the dock in China for no more than $130 and probably closer to $100. Find room on that bill of materials for a $32 component.
The only remaining question is whether ARM can provide a big enough advantage to claw out a market share with Intel and Microsoft bringing every dirty trick to bear they can think of. Because ARM is a existential threat to both of em. ARM needs to provide a 'good enough' computing experience compared to Atom AND either a crapload more run time in the same weight/performance class or be at least %50 cheaper in the same class. We will see.
> My estimate is that $399 would more correctly represent the value for a full version of MacOS X that can be installed on any computer.
Except that can't be so. Apple will sell you a Mac MIni for $599 with a full copy of OS X. There is several hundred dollars of value in the hardware plus the Apple insane profit margin. So the value of the software simply can't be $399. You could BUY a Mini and transfer the license to a real computer and then resell the Mini loaded with MythTV. The difference between the Mini as Apple sold it and what the fair market value of the MiniMyth is the fair market value of OS X. And yes it's legal. Remember, EULAs are rubbish and copyright law doesn't grant a copyright holder the right to bind a copyrighted work to a piece of unrelated hardware.
As I say above, Apple wants to have it both ways. And I'm trying to push em into a logic trap. If Apple admits the boxes are only upgrades they void a minor but useful argument they have been using to compete with Windows with it's $399 MSRP for Vista Ultimate. But if they do THAT it opens up a very valid next question. If those boxes are upgrades, what IS the price for OS X? The trap is there isn't any answer they can give taht doesn't bone them.
Think about it. If they adopt your $399 price they do a lot more than just lose the price argument with Vista. The second they put a price on it somebody will do the one thing Apple doesn't want, offer to buy it. So they do what they are doing, fuzz the issue and have it both ways and neither. Those boxes are and aren't upgrades.
> So, hacking MacOS/X onto a non-Apple computer is a non-starter for most of the people MacOS/X is targetted at.
Unless you fall into several broad catagories of user.
1. Someone who wants to run OS X on a normal desktop for less than $2499. Hint for Apple: $2499 as a STARTING PRICE for a basic tower PC is so far out of the ballpark you guys apparent't aren't even trying to find the ballpark.
2. Someone who want to run OS X on a laptop for less than $999 and/or wants to run it on a netbook. Hint for Apple: $999 for a laptop is now about midrange, thus excluding about half of the market.
3. Someone who has a hardware requirement not met by the very limited offerings offered by one single vendor. And the one vendor, for reasons not clearly understood, has big freaking holes in their product line apparently intended to keep OS X market share down.
> On the other hand if you start with a list of requirements and find both a mac and a PC
to fit that list the mac will often end up far more expensive..
Exactly. Raise your hand if you NEED a Xeon with ECC memory on your desktop..... and you aren't a a very narrow band of major scientist, engineer, etc. who need lots of throbbing power and yet don't have access to a compute cluster. Almost by definition Apple has restricted their desktops to people spending OPM (and where the other people are idiots) or people with more money than brains.
The Mini is just a sad joke and the i* stuff is all in one crap about as expandable, customizable, etc as a toaster where you upgrade by forklifting in a whole new stack of machines. And people wonder why Apple's corporate penetration is non-existent. Corporations will throw a couple to the art dept if they bitch and whine enough, but that's it.
It's almost like Apple WANTS to keep the Mac a small exclusive club. Which is the truth. Apple is selling a premium brand experience and if it ever threatened to become mainstream the value would disappear.
> Minimum System Requirements
> Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
Yea and a boxed copy of Vista lists the hardware requirements for it too, doesn't make it an upgrade. Hint, an upgrade is linked to a specific set of prior (or sometimes competing) software products. Hardware requirements are the minimums needed to use the software. For example Vista Home Basic says it requires an 800Mhz CPU. Doesn't mean it won't install on a 700, just that you can't bitch at Microsoft support when you find oou they were actually overly optimistic. Now Apple won't support you if you install on anything that isn't theirs but that is a support issue not a legal one. Hint: a EULA is legally meaningless in most jurisdictions. Copyright law has nothing about a right to tie software to possession of the vendor's hardware.
> Err, They err, they do have UPGRADE written on the boxes.
Well I live in flyover country so haven't seen an actual BOX in several years. It didn't say UPGRADE then. And right now I'm looking at Apple's store and the box does NOT say upgrade. The ad copy does not say upgrade anywhere. The requirements do not list which previous versions of OS X are required to qualify for this 'upgrade' you believe they are selling. Nope, unless the physical boxes actually differ from what Apple depicts at their own store if I bought one I'd be buying a full legal copy of OS X and could do whatever I wanted with it. Not that I would, I'm a geek and prefer the company of the Penguin flock to the mindless swarms of the Mac Zealots.
> The $130 doesn't get you an OS that will run on commodity hardware.
Yes it will, you just have to hack around the DRM a bit and be careful about what hardware you install it on. The second part is no different than when I carefully research a new PC intended to run Linux.
Sorry, Apple can't have it both ways. On the one hand they claim the boxed copies of OS X aren't 'upgrade' copies, that they are full versions when they compare to the outrageous full retail prices for Windows. But as soon as somebody wants to install OS X on commodity hardware and the laughter about Apple's claim to the right to restrict their seperately boxed OS to Apple hardware dies out some Zealot pulls out the "But those boxes are just an upgrade so you aren't just ignoring the EULA you are a pirate." line. Make your minds up once and for all and either put "UPGRADE" on the boxes or shut up when people install em on whatever they want.
> ...that the head of Microsoft would apparently put no value on software.
Except we know the value of the software, Apple sells it seperately for $130, or about what an OEM edition of Vista Business adds to a typical Dell.
No, the price difference is so the Faithful can run around flaunting their glowing logo and think they are superior people. Bah.
> Abortion is an issue more complicated than "women's rights!" because the question
> also involes whether the fetus is "alive"/a person/etc or not.
Nope. It was decided because a majority wanted to legalize abortion. Period. After that it was just coming up with some bullcrap to justify that decision. The Constitution says nothing about abortion. Every doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath at the time of the writing of the document swore NOT to be involved in the practice so the Founders certainly were aware of the concept. So since they knew of it and failed to enumerate it as a power of the Federal government there should be zero argument that the 10th Amendment makes it an issue for the States.
Had they been actually doing their job the ruling would have consisted of the following and nothing more:
"The only guidance the Constitution provides is mentioning "Born or naturalized" in relation to citizenship. Thus the Constitution implies Birth as the dividing line between having rights and not having them. Therefore this Court has no grounds to rule that the States must forbid abortion. Since a fetus is thus not a person for purposes of Federal Law and the Constitution is silent on the issue the 10th Amendment reserves the regulation of abortion to the States and thus this Court has no power to require a State to permit, forbid or otherwise control the availibility, price or anything else related to the practice."
"If Congress is unhappy with this ruling it is free to begin the Amendment process. This Court will of course abide by any change lawfully made to the Constitution."
> Most people don't even realize that R v. W was decided based on the issue of -privacy-. What a farce!
Especially since privacy isn't a Right mentioned at any point in the document. Earlier 'rulings' created that one.
> All someone has to do is set up a Certificate Authority and they can basically
> construct their own private internet from the ground up.
Not exactly. You are still asking each website to adopt the system, not recreating every popular site. So no you couldn't have an alternate Wikipedia unless you forked their content onto your own servers. The difference is that the version offered by the new port would be required to be properly tagged for content. They could even have porn, just as long as every bit was tagged in the http response before the content so teh browser could refuse to accept content it has been programmed to accept.
The big difference in my idea over PICS is the requirement for certs and keys implying revocation for intentionally setting the tags to let filth get to people who shouldd't get it.
And psst. One noteworthy side effect. Since the whole scheme falls apart without reliable end to end crypto on every single pageview it eliminates most of the usefulness of a government mandated filter at the ISP level. Remember, the vilest rotgut porn COULD be served over this protocol, so long as it is tagged correctly. Acceptable content is purely a contract between the server and client.
> except that blocking port 80 in that scenario is superfluous.
To prevent them simply launching an unrestricted Firefox from a USB key. Or undermining the Windows help system which is these days largly a web browser, etc.
> One has to wonder though if google would pass their test and if not how useful their safe internet would be.
http://www.google.com/ certainly wouldn't pass. If Google didn't offer up a clean search on the alternate port somebody else would certainly fill the hole in the marketplace.
And a few addendums to my original post.
A new protocol name would be required to avoid pahing to keep specifying the port number in URLs. Perhaps shttp: for SafeHTTP? And the browser would have to explicitly know to switch cert chains based on the https or shttp protocol. This whole scheme could be done in a single RFC and a few man hours of hacking on Firefox to produce a proof of concept browser. The rest would be political and marketing to get enough sites to sign on.
And that last part is the sticking point. Others have tried, remember my mention of IE supporting a system to put ratings in the headers? Nobody does. So who would buy a new ssl cert and open up an alternate port unless a whole heck of a lot of political pressure came crashing down.
I'm a libertarian and unless the government mandated this scheme I would actually like to see it done. Got grand kids about to be old enough to use the Internet. And on the current Internet the undesirable stuff comes looking for you whether you are looking for it or not.
How about a counter proposal. Leave port 80 just like it is. The people who want a 'cleaned kid friendly Internet' can establish an alternate port where such a thing would be delivered. Do it like this:
Rule one: all servers running on this new port have to be doing https.
Rule two: all certs will use an entirely new chain of trust established by the consortium doing this new safe net. They condition the server keys on a site obeying whatever content rules they put out, revoking the keys of sites who go rogue.
Rule three: A mandatory set of tags describing the content on each page so parents can adjust their browser accordingly to their views. Such a system already exists in IE and could exist in others once someone actually began using the stuff. After all a browser update will probably be required to get the new root certs installed anyway.
Then it is just a matter of blocking port 80 on kids computers. Best done at the AP/router.
> I have had problems with this site in konqueror at various times, webkit and opera.
I am having problems right now with this site. I'm running Fedora 10 with all updates applied. I can't read messages from the system, I just get a blank screen. They work at home on an older Firefox. For some reason posting a comment, in the idle section only, sometimes forces typing the post in a tall narrow entry field perhaps twenty characters wide.
The Javascript is so slow I get dialog boxes asking whether to stop the script. I get em on this slow POS at work and on my almost modern 64bit machine at home. Any machine new enough to have an Athlon64 CPU should be able to display slashdot's homepage.
It is clear the slashdot editors run Windows/Mac machines and never view their site on a Linux based machine or they would have at least addressed the Javascript problems.
> Men write the Laws. What's the difference?
For the readers educated in government schools.... Some might get some of this eventually.
The difference is night and day. In the Rule of Men whatever the current President/King/Emperor/etc says is Law. This is basically what we now have, Constituition be damned, if The Supremes say it it is Law and they aren't bound by any external force or agreement. And we have been conditioned to accept this as legitimate justice.
With the Rule of Law the laws are written down ahead of time and everyone knows what the laws are and are bound to them. Yes they can be changed but you actually have to change them, and you generally aren't allowed to make a retroactive change. Changing the Constituition itself is permissible but the procedure was intentionally made difficult to protect against momentary passions.
So for example Roe v Wade was clearly a violation. If as a country we want the Federal government to take a position one way or the other on the issue we should have had to amend the Constituition. That would have forced a huge messy public debate on the issue and we would have settled the issue back in the 1970's and not still be fighting it out now. The way it is now everyone realizes that five Supremes ARE the law so both sides fight to get five of theirs on, thus the issue hinges of the power balance of the day.. i.e. on the MEN who hold the office not the LAW they uphold.
The fact we all sat waiting for the Supremes to rule in the Keller decision, and that the outcome was actually in doubt, proves we have exchanged the Rule of Law for the Rule of Men. No scholar of the English language as used to write the 2nd Amendment disputes the clear meaning of the words. No scholar of the men who wrote the words dispute the meaning they intended the words to have. Yet we waited patiently for the Nine Robed Eminences to pronounce their verdict that, by a slim 5-4 decision, the Law really would be upheld.... for now. One vacancy and we could have five who believe differently. If the Rule of Law still held every Justice who dissented would have been removed on the grounds of either failing to exhibit basic English Comprehension or willful refusal to carry out their Oath.
Again, if We the People through our elected Representitives and by following the Law governing Amendments want to remove or tweak the 2nd we have that power. But to pretend it simply doesn't exist anymore because the Constituition 'Lives' destroys the Rule of Law.
> Is that more a good thing or a bad thing?
If you have to ask.....
The idea that the Rule of Law had to prevail over the Rule of Men was probably the highest achievement of the Western system of thought. None of the rest is possible to keep without it. It is one of the central ideas encoded in the Arthur legends it goes back so far and is embedded so deep in our culture. It required generations of control over government schools to produce a population clueless enough to renounce that inheritance.
> When you're not held to a constant literal meaning of law, then the law simply
> means whatever the interpreter wants it to mean and whatever
> they can get away with through that interpretation.
Or more simply, we exchanged the Rule of Law for the Rule of Men.
> casting off the idea of race as a cultural determinant..
But I thought we just elected a POTUS almost entirely based on his biracial itentity.
"All Men are Created Equal" is such a dead white men idea I'm suprised he wasn't booed from the stage for pushing such crimethink propaganda. Guess there is some hope for our species after all.
Except for the built in BASIC on the Picaxe the AVRs have a lot going for em. I have also pondered the idea of building a low tech computer just to see how much could be done on something that would bring the term 'low power' back down to Model 100 levels and perhaps even finally surpass 1980's tech.
You can get MRAM in the same package as the old school SRAM and some of the AVRs have an external memory interface that appears compatible. So that would allow some really deep sleeping, just push everything out of the on chip RAM and kill all power, with none of the bother associated with flash like write count limits or worrying about the time/power to copy everything in/out. If you totally kill power you couldn't use the onboard RTC but that could go on the i2c bus with a self contained button cell like on a real laptop.
If you could keep the display and input device power onsumption low enough alternative power could really be useful. Think solar powered information kiosks for example. You could run them off power harvested from street lights. No backup battery to replace, totally sealed agsinst the elements and abuse. But nobody thinks low tech like this, any proposed project has to be x86, run Windows etc. Or if somebody is really thinking outside the box they would propose an ARM running Linux or WinCE and again be consuming ten or more times the power than an AVR and a mono LCD just to run the backlight on a color TFT lcd display.
> The project would save substantial amounts of money and would provide a flexible, extensible machine for children to wander and learn.
Except nobody will buy them unless they run Windows. Microsoft will see to that. Negroponte probably realized that from the start which is why he allowed the Sugar fiasco. He didn't care how impractical/avant garde/experimental Sugar was since it was never going to actually ship. The whole effort was to leverage a good price for Windows.
Between the "The children need to learn Windows because that is what they will need in the real world" FUD and the bribery of government officials Linux has no chance of deployment in the 3th world in any sort of top down way. Remember, every OLPC proposed deployment is to a 3rd world pesthole and the #1 reason for being a 3rd world pesthole in the first place is having a corrupt government. If pengiuns are to have a shot it has to bubble up from below, under the radar of Microsoft away from teh influence of their ability to drop a briefcases of cash on the right official's desk.