The BSG similarities are because it's not really an alien civilization, just an alienated one. The original BSG was based rather strongly in Mormon mythos. It is from this that the Mormon "Kolob", the planet where God resides and from whence all human and alien civilizations are spawned, became Kobol, mother planet for the thirteen colonies (including the distant Earth).
You can draw whatever conclusions you would like from there, but the whole point of the (original) series was to draw as many parallels as possible and make the colonists truly seem like long-lost brothers adrift in the larger universe. While some of the fashion doesn't fit in a strict Sci-Fi sense, it makes the characters seem decidedly less alien, which is one of the most basic goals of the series.
I do, however, agree that SG-1 isn't really stale. It's gotten to a point that most other shows will never reach -- one where a contemporary government has become somewhat comfortable with the presence of alien races, and where the actors have been on the show long enough to actually pull off the appropriate level of familiarity. It's still got quite a few fluff episodes and the acting isn't as good on a dramatic level as some other shows, but it's definitely far better than we've come to expect from Sci-Fi on TV.
There will still be wheeling and dealing SOB's out there, until you can tell me there's a machine that can create a SAFE and delicious range of food products in a very short period of time. Food has always been the one scarcity that is not only real scarcity, but a life-and-death issue.
Most people can't do that on their own. I do this for my longtime customers as a service, and it usually costs about $125.00-$150.00 to rent me out for an afternoon and get a full reformat. Some local screwdriver shops do this for about $50.00, but you have to leave your PC with them, you're solely responsible for backing up what you want to keep, and most of your applications will be missing when you get it back.
However, I think that this article is indicative of an awful amount of waste that goes on in this country. Computers are some of the most environmentally harmful products to produce and/or dispose of, and here we've got someone advocating throwing a computer away and buying a new one just because they don't like what's loaded into it? It's not just our corporations that think with their wallets and damn the whole world, there are plenty of consumers who think that way too!
The logic is that if you have a more powerful machine, you're able to serve up more customers with less hardware. Companies assume that you'll buy the fastest (or near-fastest) processors to acheive that. In theory, the software is being used to serve your business needs relating to x consumers, in direct proportion to the state of computing today. However, if you buy an SMP box, you're effectively "cheating" (i.e., jumping ahead of Moore's curve) by getting a product that will serve x * 1.387 or somesuch number of customers, so they artificially penalize you for it.
It's a bunch of crap. If these companies really charged you the way they want to, you'd pay a rental fee based on the maximum capacity of your server -- they'd send out some asshole to benchmark your system running their software and based on the horsepower of the machine, they'd charge you a proportionate amount of money. If you upgraded, it'd phone home and need re-calibrating so you could pay the additional licensing charge. IMO, it's extortion -- they're saying that they want a percentage of your profits, rather than just selling you a product.
I don't see it working like this. When I was traveling in China, I heard MSFT's FUD being spouted by some teenagers there: "I'd never buy an iPod because it's so limited. Sure, it can play MP3's, and it's a lot nicer than the other players, but it isn't compatible with [DRM'ed WMA files] like everything else. I don't know why Apple doesn't have that level of compatibility."
This is just Microsoft abusing its monopoly power again, to do something that no ethical person would advocate, and something that no other company could organize. And the scary thing is that the consumers are so ignorant, they'll probably think that everyone else is the bad guy for not going along with it.
Consider advertising costs. How heavily is this stupid movie going to be promoted on Hotmail, the MSN network, and within Microsoft's Messenger? It's not just brand recognition, it's about engaging the company behind the brand.
You could take a different slant. I know a lot of people (a younger crowd, for sure) that hadn't been exposed to Asimov until this. As far as movies go, it almost certainly drew more people to read his work than Contact. You got to watch a fun action-blockbuster movie with cool visuals, and someone else got exposed to Isaac Asimov's name and hints of his ideas for the first time. And Asimov's estate made some money.
If it had actually been craptastic (as I'm sure many people here feel) then I could see some outrage over linking the Asimov name with the film. But as it stands, it wasn't really bad publicity for one of your favorite authors, just someone making a good movie and playing fast-and-loose with the words "based on".
Now, if you're upset that this precludes a realI, Robot movie that is actually based on the book, I'll join you in that sentiment. But, given how many younger sci-fi fans have yet to read Asimov's books, and that the movie was probably positive in a mindshare context for most people, I'll contend that it wasn't such a dumb move after all.
On Topic: Video Game movies are not in the same bucket. You can't add to a video game's experience, you can only take away. What games lack in storyline depth or emotional context, they make up for with engaging gameplay and (often) social gaming aspects. Game scenarios don't work well for tacking on drama or subterfuge, and so they don't work well on the big screen. Period. Hollywood, can you prove me wrong?
... I'm sure well more than 95% of them are completly legit.
Yeah. Right up until the first subsequent release of Windows. Then, let the piracy begin!
You're also forgetting that small businesses often buy their machines from screwdriver shops that will allow you to provide your "old" Install Disc when you buy a machine. Dell has changed some of this recently with their super-deep discounts and coupon deals, but there's a LOT of hardware out there that's not legit. Banks, Fortune 500 companies, and retail chains might be 95% legit, but that's not the whole picture.
Sure. I might add that the USPTO should be made aware of it so they can reject those patents out-of-hand and screw any malicious applicants out of the application fees...
It bears mentioning that md5 doesn't account for the length of the file. So if someone were to try installing a backdoor into a program, and had a sophisticated enough piece of software using this method, comments, metadata, or other information could be used to 'pad out' the file to make it seem like the original -- even with source code files. Especially in the case of executables, they could just insert random crap at the end of an executable file, and make the md5 hash (and possibly the size) come out identical to the original. Some of these have already been demonstrated.
While this collision will be a big deal for signing documents, it shouldn't have any effect on web security (Digest Authentication, for one, uses MD5 pretty extensively). The lesson: While MD5 is still reasonably difficult to collide, the time to find collisions (~5 hours) on a normal PC means that malicious uses are now practical.
I'm not entirely sure what the implications are -- would it be suitable to sign documents using multiple cryptographic functions (such as a signature containing SHA, MD5, and CRC32 hashes, along with the original filesize)? Maybe perform a simple, arbitrary transformation on the text content and use that to generate a seperate, complimentary MD5 or SHA hash?
There are interesting nuances to this, though, for one that Apple is using PC BIOS -- alone, this represents a phenomenal technological setback for their company. APPLE may be selling a version of OS X that will only run on Apple hardware, but who said ANYTHING about other vendors co-branding and selling their own, different versions of OS X?
Sure, Apple-released OS X will run only on Apple hardware, but what is to say you won't be able to buy an HP Computer with HP OS X on it? Apple knows what it has is valuable -- their brand. They will continue to keep it exclusive to the extent that it helps them make money. If they choose to co-opt or rebrand their products for additional profit, they'll do it. Right now, their market share is so low overall that even if letting HP sell a version of OS X as an option cannibalized 50% of Apple hardware sales, and they got a 1% kickback on the HP machine sales, they'd be coming out ahead.
Honestly, aren't there any PC mega-vendors that are getting sick and tired of supporting MS Windows in the face of all its insecurities and problems? Spyware-ridden machines with millions of instabilities and quirky problems are as much a pain to them as to their customers. Dell, Sony, HP, et al. are probably thinking one thing: "How can we shaft MS and at the same time, have something worthwhile to give our customers?" The ensuing discussion: "Linux still isn't quite ready for the desktop, and good luck getting commercial apps we can resell -- I know!! We'll get Steve Jobs to sub-brand OS X to us!"
I agree with Cringely on one thing: I think this whole 'phase' may just be to get developers to ready their applications for the x86 platform before they understand the ideology-breaking bombshell Apple will be dropping later.
Methinks you're forgetting the cartel-like behavior of all the major players in this game. It's unlikely that MS would really interfere with its buddies, rather choosing to pick on the little guys with big ideas and patent innovations coming from academia. Before this law, a published paper or a delivered product was a pretty solid indicator of prior art. Effectively, they're throwing prior out out the window as a reason for rejecting a patent.
First-to-file is frightening, and is blatant rape of everything patents were designed to do. It means if you're contracting with someone, they could patent your deliverables before you get the chance, and therefore would be the ones with exclusive rights to sell/reuse your contracted work -- leaving you in the lurch.
I see a future where you have to work out patent rules as a matter of contract law before working for or with another company, and even before taking on employees! It will be a world where people are continually filing streams of useless patents just to prevent being sued for infringement on their own creative works. This could effectively kill OSS, since it would allow a patenting company (or a major IT group) to browse mailing lists, usenet, and source archives, filing blindly in hopes of beating out the originator, while at the same time forcing individuals to constantly waste money on filing fees for work that's probably not even patent-worthy in the first place. If an author doesn't file a patent, they risk being dragged to court as an infringer on someone else's patent of their work. 'Draconian' just doesn't quite capture this.
Then again, maybe this will be the tipping point, the thing that makes the American Public sit up and say "What happened to (FireFox / Open Office / Linux / etc.)?" and finally come around to the fact that Software Patents don't help anyone. Software is, and should be, protected solely by copyright (maybe a slightly broader interpretation of 'copy', and with a very limited term -- perhaps only 1.5 - 3 years).
I just don't understand how this would help anyone, even Microsoft! After all, if the legal lines have been drawn, then all of the little guys they're currently ripping off will have to start filing patents left and ri -- oh, yeah, then Microsoft could flex its legal muscle by challenging every patent that comes through (and file counter-patents at the same time), and through legal bullying they could basically bankrupt the inventor AND steal his innovation at the same time. I guess it would help the patent-mongering megalithic corporations.
How can our legislature be so stupid/corrupt/nearsighted to let these things slip through? I guess it's the new Republican mindset that the US is a coalition of corporations, not a nation of people. Gives new meaning to legislation that's supposed to be "Good for America"...
If this goes through, we may have to start a dues-payable coalition to patent members' innovations just so they cannot be later enforced - a kind of FSF/Copyleft for patents. But all the while, we'll still be pumping money into a corrupt patent office, and still facing legal persecution from the big clearinghouses.
Actually, that's mostly true. If you'd been using Apple's Folder concept (where windows remember where they are on screen, icons stay where you put them, and each folder opens in a new window), it would have been intuitive from the beginning.
Navigating an OS through a CLI or Windows/Linux's file browsers is a huge mental burden compared to using your brain's eye-hand coordination features to browse a filesystem. Without the afrementioned principles being completely and consistently applied, the physical metaphor breaks down and it's no easier than navigating through a CLI (save that you don't have to type ls...). People who used the Apple system for years had a major break when OSX started implementing "progressive" features, esp. the 3-pane view, and couldn't figure out where their productivity went. They were getting distracted during the file-browsing process because of the mental effort that had to be expended to find the files! Hardcore *NIX and Windows geeks have built-up the mental muscle to navigate filesystems with ease, but remember that, for most, this is a very difficult skill to learn. Most Joe Users couldn't tell you what folders their most important files are in, and just put shortcuts to everything on their desktop or in a menu. God forbid they need a file that's not on their shortcut menu or desktop.
That's why home users have had such a difficult time grasping the files/folders concept all along -- on Windows, they never really behaved like real folders and files. Now, with "smart" folders, we're finally getting the computer to do something oranizationally that couldn't have been done in the real world. And this time it looks like it's worth breaking the desktop metaphor. All preliminary reports are that Tiger's Spotlight has made people more productive...
Amending the constitiution is hard, but (as TFA and general circumstances imply), what is NOT hard is brow-beating people into ignoring what the constitution says.
The people in this country need to get together and get rid of the corporate-influenced Democratic and Republican parties. There needs to be an implicit agreement among all the independent parties that they will try to convince their constituents to vote ONE way for a specfic period of time, to help all the independent parties. Eg, if the Libertarian or Green party could gather enough support to convince people their votes actually do count, and get a president elected, or (possibly) even gain a sizable influence in Congress, American voters would have to change their ways of thinking about voting. Most people now think their vote doesn't matter, and for those who do vote, a great many of them are simply choosing the "lesser of two evils". Looks like we chose wrong this time around.
Since all commodity PC hardware has to have a PC BIOS, if Apple wants to distinguish their product, they'll probably do it by replacing the BIOS on the motherboard with a custom kernel-loader. Projects like LinuxBIOS have already kind of paved the way and proved that not only can you differentiate the hardware, but you can get some pretty substantial benefits from doing so.
So, which of the following are likely?
Apple's OS won't run on PC hardware without a custom BIOS being flashed onto the hardware
Apple Computers won't be able to run MS Windows without a 3rd-party BIOS
Microsoft will (if possible) design a version of Windows that is capable of booting on an Apple Machine
It just might be all three. I just think it'd be nice for Apple to release a board/machine capable of booting either, or (gasp!) both at the same time. Naw, that'd probably require Windows to be a good citizen on the hardware.
While I'm sure that extensive research was done to make sure the environmental impact to manufacture the replacement items did not outweigh the benefits of using them, one has to wonder what kind of unstated bias was inherent in any such research?
If the United States (or any national government, for that matter) wants to really get serious about energy conservation, they need to send this generation a shock to correct a lot of bad habits. I'm proposing a tax on all *new* goods, directly proportional to the overall environmental impact of producing the good. Since energy return per energy invested is so very high for oil right now, we're buying many goods at about 3-10% of their total actual cost to produce. I'm not suggesting a 3000% tax, but customers need to be educated in a meaningful, lasting way about the problems we will soon face. And such a tax, if properly (that is to say, directly) funneled into energy research and the development of new, cleaner energy infrastructure, would help our society far more than any short-term economic impact could hurt it.
Having the ability to edit code, and see the results on a different screen does wonders for one's productivity. Especially on web development, you can have one monitor dedicated to your IDE of choice (Notepad++ for me) and the other monitor dedicated to output and documentation. I started using dual monitors five years ago when I got a Matrox Millenium G400, and NEVER went back. When I run BeOS or Linux, it is always in dual-monitor mode whenever possible. Even when I work on my Powerbook, if it's serious work, I'll hook up a big LCD or CRT as a second monitor.
I have one work system on-site at a client's business that won't support dual monitors. I cry a little inside every time I have to press alt-tab instead of glancing to the left or right.
So, if you download shareware that has features disabled pending activation, are you entitled to all the features without paying? I mean, "they're already there". I fail to see a difference.
Honestly, the Dreamcast was the end of big-title PC Gaming for me. After that point, game makers decided that they would focus on graphics above gameplay. Apart from Gish, there haven't been any "must-have" PC titles in many years.
If there are one or two games that you absolutely must have, spend as much money as you think is appropriate to get whatever hardware they need to run on. If there was a PC game I thought I just had to have, I probably would have ante'd up for the hardware necessary to run it. If you're like me, and you just want the opportunity to (casually) play an amusing or entertaining game when you feel like it, ANY system -- PC, XBox, PS2, Gameboy, PSP, or any of the next-gen consoles -- will have a selection that's more than large enough to find lots of good games, and the overall price of the solution and the hassle of maintaining it will decide.
Unless the author of the article knows for a fact which platform is going to have the most engaging and amusing games, and which ones are going to be duds, any speculation at this point is worthless. People don't buy game systems as much as they buy the ability to play games. Which platforms will have popular games? That's anybody's guess.
Require no difficult calibration. They do not distort, skew, rotate, or pincushion, even with age.
Run cool
Do not respond dramatically to EM interference
BTW, when I got rid of my 2x 19" CRT's, it wasn't just for power savings. My 2-year-old CRT's phosphors had faded until they were noticably dimmer than the new LCD, and I can definitely attest to reduced eyestrain with the new monitors. Calculate the desk area, and the two CRT's took up more than 5 square feet -- I spent $450 on two 17" LCD's that take up a combined 1 square foot. To me, that looks like about $115/ft^3, not $1000.
And ditching 21" CRT's for 21" LCD's would be one heck of an upgrade. A 19" (or 20") LCD would be a closer equivalent.
I think you're making a big assumption that broadcast TV will survive (See "How BattleStar Galactica Killed TV for a rundown). The economic incentive just isn't really there for Broadcast TV like it was 10 years ago. If they find out they can't really make money giving away the content, the gig is up.
If such a service existed, I think a lot of my money would go to an iTunes music store-type portal where I could 'authorize' my device(s) to play downloaded content -- My account would allow, say, 3 computers, a fixed number of physical 'Authorization Cards' (think SIM Cards) for portable and home-theater devices, and allowances to burn one or two DVD's containing a specific item every 30-60 days.
iTunes, despite its faults, has done a pretty good job of giving people what they want -- the ability to buy, own, and keep copies of digital audio content. Restricting further copying is acceptable, as long as it doesn't interfere with the primary goal. Redefining 'Fair Use' doesn't bother me as much as the current legal campaign to abolish it completely.
Microsoft doesn't have to branch out to other platforms to enforce that kind of marketshare. They just have to make sure that users of Windows can't remove IE from their machines, and make it as difficult as possible to use something else. With increasing dependence on Windows Update, it's freaking impossible to get rid of IE. And how many stupid apps use the IE engine internally, or forcefully open IE even when it's not your default browser?
The Windows OS has everything to do with the current state of affairs in Trojan-land. If there hadn't been literally hundreds of exploits over the past 5 years that allowed companies to inject unwanted software into users' computers, two things would be different:
No companies would have a reason to be interested in the creation of Malware, Spyware, and Adware. The domain of creating and deploying such programs would be restricted almost wholly to flat-out criminals and stupid phish kiddies.
Much fewer people would choose to learn, either from curiosity or necessity, how to write such programs if they weren't effective.
I'm afraid that all of Windows' past security flaws have raised the level of interest in such gray-area and outright illegal activities to a point that, even if the whole world did switch away from Windows tomorrow, there are enough people that have the requisite skill and experience to produce a credible threat to almost any platform.
Social Engineering on the part of the user is one thing, but if you look carefully at the proliferation of such garbage software, you'll realize that society, by supporting this specific software monoculture, has given rise to a population of predators -- If you force them to search for a new source of food, they will.
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The BSG similarities are because it's not really an alien civilization, just an alienated one. The original BSG was based rather strongly in Mormon mythos. It is from this that the Mormon "Kolob", the planet where God resides and from whence all human and alien civilizations are spawned, became Kobol, mother planet for the thirteen colonies (including the distant Earth).
You can draw whatever conclusions you would like from there, but the whole point of the (original) series was to draw as many parallels as possible and make the colonists truly seem like long-lost brothers adrift in the larger universe. While some of the fashion doesn't fit in a strict Sci-Fi sense, it makes the characters seem decidedly less alien, which is one of the most basic goals of the series.
I do, however, agree that SG-1 isn't really stale. It's gotten to a point that most other shows will never reach -- one where a contemporary government has become somewhat comfortable with the presence of alien races, and where the actors have been on the show long enough to actually pull off the appropriate level of familiarity. It's still got quite a few fluff episodes and the acting isn't as good on a dramatic level as some other shows, but it's definitely far better than we've come to expect from Sci-Fi on TV.
Jasin NataelThere will still be wheeling and dealing SOB's out there, until you can tell me there's a machine that can create a SAFE and delicious range of food products in a very short period of time. Food has always been the one scarcity that is not only real scarcity, but a life-and-death issue.
Jasin NataelMost people can't do that on their own. I do this for my longtime customers as a service, and it usually costs about $125.00-$150.00 to rent me out for an afternoon and get a full reformat. Some local screwdriver shops do this for about $50.00, but you have to leave your PC with them, you're solely responsible for backing up what you want to keep, and most of your applications will be missing when you get it back.
However, I think that this article is indicative of an awful amount of waste that goes on in this country. Computers are some of the most environmentally harmful products to produce and/or dispose of, and here we've got someone advocating throwing a computer away and buying a new one just because they don't like what's loaded into it? It's not just our corporations that think with their wallets and damn the whole world, there are plenty of consumers who think that way too!
Jasin NataelThe logic is that if you have a more powerful machine, you're able to serve up more customers with less hardware. Companies assume that you'll buy the fastest (or near-fastest) processors to acheive that. In theory, the software is being used to serve your business needs relating to x consumers, in direct proportion to the state of computing today. However, if you buy an SMP box, you're effectively "cheating" (i.e., jumping ahead of Moore's curve) by getting a product that will serve x * 1.387 or somesuch number of customers, so they artificially penalize you for it.
It's a bunch of crap. If these companies really charged you the way they want to, you'd pay a rental fee based on the maximum capacity of your server -- they'd send out some asshole to benchmark your system running their software and based on the horsepower of the machine, they'd charge you a proportionate amount of money. If you upgraded, it'd phone home and need re-calibrating so you could pay the additional licensing charge. IMO, it's extortion -- they're saying that they want a percentage of your profits, rather than just selling you a product.
Jasin NataelI don't see it working like this. When I was traveling in China, I heard MSFT's FUD being spouted by some teenagers there: "I'd never buy an iPod because it's so limited. Sure, it can play MP3's, and it's a lot nicer than the other players, but it isn't compatible with [DRM'ed WMA files] like everything else. I don't know why Apple doesn't have that level of compatibility."
This is just Microsoft abusing its monopoly power again, to do something that no ethical person would advocate, and something that no other company could organize. And the scary thing is that the consumers are so ignorant, they'll probably think that everyone else is the bad guy for not going along with it.
Jasin NataelEmbarrasing moments on /. Probably I should have said "Bicentennial Man".
Jasin NataelConsider advertising costs. How heavily is this stupid movie going to be promoted on Hotmail, the MSN network, and within Microsoft's Messenger? It's not just brand recognition, it's about engaging the company behind the brand.
Jasin NataelYou could take a different slant. I know a lot of people (a younger crowd, for sure) that hadn't been exposed to Asimov until this. As far as movies go, it almost certainly drew more people to read his work than Contact. You got to watch a fun action-blockbuster movie with cool visuals, and someone else got exposed to Isaac Asimov's name and hints of his ideas for the first time. And Asimov's estate made some money.
If it had actually been craptastic (as I'm sure many people here feel) then I could see some outrage over linking the Asimov name with the film. But as it stands, it wasn't really bad publicity for one of your favorite authors, just someone making a good movie and playing fast-and-loose with the words "based on".
Now, if you're upset that this precludes a real I, Robot movie that is actually based on the book, I'll join you in that sentiment. But, given how many younger sci-fi fans have yet to read Asimov's books, and that the movie was probably positive in a mindshare context for most people, I'll contend that it wasn't such a dumb move after all.
On Topic: Video Game movies are not in the same bucket. You can't add to a video game's experience, you can only take away. What games lack in storyline depth or emotional context, they make up for with engaging gameplay and (often) social gaming aspects. Game scenarios don't work well for tacking on drama or subterfuge, and so they don't work well on the big screen. Period. Hollywood, can you prove me wrong?
Jasin NataelYeah. Right up until the first subsequent release of Windows. Then, let the piracy begin!
You're also forgetting that small businesses often buy their machines from screwdriver shops that will allow you to provide your "old" Install Disc when you buy a machine. Dell has changed some of this recently with their super-deep discounts and coupon deals, but there's a LOT of hardware out there that's not legit. Banks, Fortune 500 companies, and retail chains might be 95% legit, but that's not the whole picture.
Jasin NataelSure. I might add that the USPTO should be made aware of it so they can reject those patents out-of-hand and screw any malicious applicants out of the application fees...
Jasin NataelIt bears mentioning that md5 doesn't account for the length of the file. So if someone were to try installing a backdoor into a program, and had a sophisticated enough piece of software using this method, comments, metadata, or other information could be used to 'pad out' the file to make it seem like the original -- even with source code files. Especially in the case of executables, they could just insert random crap at the end of an executable file, and make the md5 hash (and possibly the size) come out identical to the original. Some of these have already been demonstrated.
While this collision will be a big deal for signing documents, it shouldn't have any effect on web security (Digest Authentication, for one, uses MD5 pretty extensively). The lesson: While MD5 is still reasonably difficult to collide, the time to find collisions (~5 hours) on a normal PC means that malicious uses are now practical.
I'm not entirely sure what the implications are -- would it be suitable to sign documents using multiple cryptographic functions (such as a signature containing SHA, MD5, and CRC32 hashes, along with the original filesize)? Maybe perform a simple, arbitrary transformation on the text content and use that to generate a seperate, complimentary MD5 or SHA hash?
Jasin NataelThere are interesting nuances to this, though, for one that Apple is using PC BIOS -- alone, this represents a phenomenal technological setback for their company. APPLE may be selling a version of OS X that will only run on Apple hardware, but who said ANYTHING about other vendors co-branding and selling their own, different versions of OS X?
Sure, Apple-released OS X will run only on Apple hardware, but what is to say you won't be able to buy an HP Computer with HP OS X on it? Apple knows what it has is valuable -- their brand. They will continue to keep it exclusive to the extent that it helps them make money. If they choose to co-opt or rebrand their products for additional profit, they'll do it. Right now, their market share is so low overall that even if letting HP sell a version of OS X as an option cannibalized 50% of Apple hardware sales, and they got a 1% kickback on the HP machine sales, they'd be coming out ahead.
Honestly, aren't there any PC mega-vendors that are getting sick and tired of supporting MS Windows in the face of all its insecurities and problems? Spyware-ridden machines with millions of instabilities and quirky problems are as much a pain to them as to their customers. Dell, Sony, HP, et al. are probably thinking one thing: "How can we shaft MS and at the same time, have something worthwhile to give our customers?" The ensuing discussion: "Linux still isn't quite ready for the desktop, and good luck getting commercial apps we can resell -- I know!! We'll get Steve Jobs to sub-brand OS X to us!"
I agree with Cringely on one thing: I think this whole 'phase' may just be to get developers to ready their applications for the x86 platform before they understand the ideology-breaking bombshell Apple will be dropping later.
Jasin NataelMethinks you're forgetting the cartel-like behavior of all the major players in this game. It's unlikely that MS would really interfere with its buddies, rather choosing to pick on the little guys with big ideas and patent innovations coming from academia. Before this law, a published paper or a delivered product was a pretty solid indicator of prior art. Effectively, they're throwing prior out out the window as a reason for rejecting a patent.
Jasin NataelFirst-to-file is frightening, and is blatant rape of everything patents were designed to do. It means if you're contracting with someone, they could patent your deliverables before you get the chance, and therefore would be the ones with exclusive rights to sell/reuse your contracted work -- leaving you in the lurch.
I see a future where you have to work out patent rules as a matter of contract law before working for or with another company, and even before taking on employees! It will be a world where people are continually filing streams of useless patents just to prevent being sued for infringement on their own creative works. This could effectively kill OSS, since it would allow a patenting company (or a major IT group) to browse mailing lists, usenet, and source archives, filing blindly in hopes of beating out the originator, while at the same time forcing individuals to constantly waste money on filing fees for work that's probably not even patent-worthy in the first place. If an author doesn't file a patent, they risk being dragged to court as an infringer on someone else's patent of their work. 'Draconian' just doesn't quite capture this.
Then again, maybe this will be the tipping point, the thing that makes the American Public sit up and say "What happened to (FireFox / Open Office / Linux / etc.)?" and finally come around to the fact that Software Patents don't help anyone. Software is, and should be, protected solely by copyright (maybe a slightly broader interpretation of 'copy', and with a very limited term -- perhaps only 1.5 - 3 years).
I just don't understand how this would help anyone, even Microsoft! After all, if the legal lines have been drawn, then all of the little guys they're currently ripping off will have to start filing patents left and ri -- oh, yeah, then Microsoft could flex its legal muscle by challenging every patent that comes through (and file counter-patents at the same time), and through legal bullying they could basically bankrupt the inventor AND steal his innovation at the same time. I guess it would help the patent-mongering megalithic corporations.
How can our legislature be so stupid/corrupt/nearsighted to let these things slip through? I guess it's the new Republican mindset that the US is a coalition of corporations, not a nation of people. Gives new meaning to legislation that's supposed to be "Good for America"...
If this goes through, we may have to start a dues-payable coalition to patent members' innovations just so they cannot be later enforced - a kind of FSF/Copyleft for patents. But all the while, we'll still be pumping money into a corrupt patent office, and still facing legal persecution from the big clearinghouses.
Jasin NataelActually, that's mostly true. If you'd been using Apple's Folder concept (where windows remember where they are on screen, icons stay where you put them, and each folder opens in a new window), it would have been intuitive from the beginning.
Navigating an OS through a CLI or Windows/Linux's file browsers is a huge mental burden compared to using your brain's eye-hand coordination features to browse a filesystem. Without the afrementioned principles being completely and consistently applied, the physical metaphor breaks down and it's no easier than navigating through a CLI (save that you don't have to type ls...). People who used the Apple system for years had a major break when OSX started implementing "progressive" features, esp. the 3-pane view, and couldn't figure out where their productivity went. They were getting distracted during the file-browsing process because of the mental effort that had to be expended to find the files! Hardcore *NIX and Windows geeks have built-up the mental muscle to navigate filesystems with ease, but remember that, for most, this is a very difficult skill to learn. Most Joe Users couldn't tell you what folders their most important files are in, and just put shortcuts to everything on their desktop or in a menu. God forbid they need a file that's not on their shortcut menu or desktop.
That's why home users have had such a difficult time grasping the files/folders concept all along -- on Windows, they never really behaved like real folders and files. Now, with "smart" folders, we're finally getting the computer to do something oranizationally that couldn't have been done in the real world. And this time it looks like it's worth breaking the desktop metaphor. All preliminary reports are that Tiger's Spotlight has made people more productive...
Jasin NataelAmending the constitiution is hard, but (as TFA and general circumstances imply), what is NOT hard is brow-beating people into ignoring what the constitution says.
The people in this country need to get together and get rid of the corporate-influenced Democratic and Republican parties. There needs to be an implicit agreement among all the independent parties that they will try to convince their constituents to vote ONE way for a specfic period of time, to help all the independent parties. Eg, if the Libertarian or Green party could gather enough support to convince people their votes actually do count, and get a president elected, or (possibly) even gain a sizable influence in Congress, American voters would have to change their ways of thinking about voting. Most people now think their vote doesn't matter, and for those who do vote, a great many of them are simply choosing the "lesser of two evils". Looks like we chose wrong this time around.
Jasin NataelThis brings up a pretty good point... BIOS
Since all commodity PC hardware has to have a PC BIOS, if Apple wants to distinguish their product, they'll probably do it by replacing the BIOS on the motherboard with a custom kernel-loader. Projects like LinuxBIOS have already kind of paved the way and proved that not only can you differentiate the hardware, but you can get some pretty substantial benefits from doing so.
So, which of the following are likely?It just might be all three. I just think it'd be nice for Apple to release a board/machine capable of booting either, or (gasp!) both at the same time. Naw, that'd probably require Windows to be a good citizen on the hardware.
Jasin NataelWhile I'm sure that extensive research was done to make sure the environmental impact to manufacture the replacement items did not outweigh the benefits of using them, one has to wonder what kind of unstated bias was inherent in any such research?
If the United States (or any national government, for that matter) wants to really get serious about energy conservation, they need to send this generation a shock to correct a lot of bad habits. I'm proposing a tax on all *new* goods, directly proportional to the overall environmental impact of producing the good. Since energy return per energy invested is so very high for oil right now, we're buying many goods at about 3-10% of their total actual cost to produce. I'm not suggesting a 3000% tax, but customers need to be educated in a meaningful, lasting way about the problems we will soon face. And such a tax, if properly (that is to say, directly) funneled into energy research and the development of new, cleaner energy infrastructure, would help our society far more than any short-term economic impact could hurt it.
Jasin NataelAmen.
Having the ability to edit code, and see the results on a different screen does wonders for one's productivity. Especially on web development, you can have one monitor dedicated to your IDE of choice (Notepad++ for me) and the other monitor dedicated to output and documentation. I started using dual monitors five years ago when I got a Matrox Millenium G400, and NEVER went back. When I run BeOS or Linux, it is always in dual-monitor mode whenever possible. Even when I work on my Powerbook, if it's serious work, I'll hook up a big LCD or CRT as a second monitor.
I have one work system on-site at a client's business that won't support dual monitors. I cry a little inside every time I have to press alt-tab instead of glancing to the left or right.
Jasin NataelSo, if you download shareware that has features disabled pending activation, are you entitled to all the features without paying? I mean, "they're already there". I fail to see a difference.
Jasin NataelHonestly, the Dreamcast was the end of big-title PC Gaming for me. After that point, game makers decided that they would focus on graphics above gameplay. Apart from Gish, there haven't been any "must-have" PC titles in many years.
If there are one or two games that you absolutely must have, spend as much money as you think is appropriate to get whatever hardware they need to run on. If there was a PC game I thought I just had to have, I probably would have ante'd up for the hardware necessary to run it. If you're like me, and you just want the opportunity to (casually) play an amusing or entertaining game when you feel like it, ANY system -- PC, XBox, PS2, Gameboy, PSP, or any of the next-gen consoles -- will have a selection that's more than large enough to find lots of good games, and the overall price of the solution and the hassle of maintaining it will decide.
Unless the author of the article knows for a fact which platform is going to have the most engaging and amusing games, and which ones are going to be duds, any speculation at this point is worthless. People don't buy game systems as much as they buy the ability to play games. Which platforms will have popular games? That's anybody's guess.
Jasin NataelAnd LCD's:
They do not distort, skew, rotate, or pincushion, even with age.
BTW, when I got rid of my 2x 19" CRT's, it wasn't just for power savings. My 2-year-old CRT's phosphors had faded until they were noticably dimmer than the new LCD, and I can definitely attest to reduced eyestrain with the new monitors. Calculate the desk area, and the two CRT's took up more than 5 square feet -- I spent $450 on two 17" LCD's that take up a combined 1 square foot. To me, that looks like about $115/ft^3, not $1000.
And ditching 21" CRT's for 21" LCD's would be one heck of an upgrade. A 19" (or 20") LCD would be a closer equivalent.
Jasin NataelI think you're making a big assumption that broadcast TV will survive (See "How BattleStar Galactica Killed TV for a rundown). The economic incentive just isn't really there for Broadcast TV like it was 10 years ago. If they find out they can't really make money giving away the content, the gig is up.
If such a service existed, I think a lot of my money would go to an iTunes music store-type portal where I could 'authorize' my device(s) to play downloaded content -- My account would allow, say, 3 computers, a fixed number of physical 'Authorization Cards' (think SIM Cards) for portable and home-theater devices, and allowances to burn one or two DVD's containing a specific item every 30-60 days.
iTunes, despite its faults, has done a pretty good job of giving people what they want -- the ability to buy, own, and keep copies of digital audio content. Restricting further copying is acceptable, as long as it doesn't interfere with the primary goal. Redefining 'Fair Use' doesn't bother me as much as the current legal campaign to abolish it completely.
Jasin NataelMicrosoft doesn't have to branch out to other platforms to enforce that kind of marketshare. They just have to make sure that users of Windows can't remove IE from their machines, and make it as difficult as possible to use something else. With increasing dependence on Windows Update, it's freaking impossible to get rid of IE. And how many stupid apps use the IE engine internally, or forcefully open IE even when it's not your default browser?
Jasin NataelThe Windows OS has everything to do with the current state of affairs in Trojan-land. If there hadn't been literally hundreds of exploits over the past 5 years that allowed companies to inject unwanted software into users' computers, two things would be different:
I'm afraid that all of Windows' past security flaws have raised the level of interest in such gray-area and outright illegal activities to a point that, even if the whole world did switch away from Windows tomorrow, there are enough people that have the requisite skill and experience to produce a credible threat to almost any platform.
Social Engineering on the part of the user is one thing, but if you look carefully at the proliferation of such garbage software, you'll realize that society, by supporting this specific software monoculture, has given rise to a population of predators -- If you force them to search for a new source of food, they will.
Jasin Natael