Sony filed an appeal and apparently got a stay on the injunction that would have forced them to stop selling their consoles and infringing software. You can read about it here.
How long before proper functionality with a core OS component is leveraged against vendors? From a business standpoint it's pretty shrewd. But from the OS design standpoint it's flat out stupid. The OS provides a platform for userspace apps. The OS is not supposed to wrap around userspace apps.
The problem is that the average user can't be trusted to ensure that they are properly protected against network-borne threats, and it's gotten to the point that someone's got to intervene. Who better to do it than Microsoft? Put the check into every copy of Windows, and make sure that you at least alert the user to the fact that they're not adequately protected. This is the only way to get the attention of otherwise blissfully ignorant users.
I don't recall reading whether or not the user is able to disable this check, but I'd even hesitate to provide an off switch. I look through/var/log/messages and assorted apache logs, and there are tons of pokes and prods from windows worms and virii that have been around for a long time. Enough is enough.
It's not like sp2 is going to be a silver bullet... there are probably lots of win2k/me/98 machines that are still getting lots of use that won't benefit from these improvements to windows security, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Hopefully the number of infected machines will decrease over time.
One final point too, regarding your M$ World Domination Paranoia, you're probably right that there is an opportunity for Microsoft to leverage this into some business opportunity. I'm inclined to think, for the time being at least, that the little checker program is a good way to go. MS could just have easily skipped the checker and imposed their own antivirus/firewall solution... not running Norton? No problem: here's MS Antivirus. (Though I guess they've got the firewall thing going on, so maybe it's just a matter of time).
Here we go again with NASA concetrating on trying to find "life" on other planets. What ever happened to the science of simply exploring and learning about our solar system and how it formed instead of this quest of focusing on trying to find life on other planets. There is more to space exploration than finding life.
But finding life is sexy. People get all excited at the thought of actually finding extra-terrestrial life, and that enthusiasm probably translates to budget increases for NASA.
Also, it's not like that's the only stuff that NASA's got on the go... this is just the sort of stuff that gets lots of attention from the media and public.
I understand the desire to move successful people to their own shows, but after Leo moved off of TSS and they were left with Patrick (who is so-so), and then Kevin Rose with his elitist attitude and his little girlfriend (can't even remember her name since she is so annoying) that knows jack nothing about computers, well, I can barely stand to watch the show.
I get a completely different impression than you of Kevin Rose's personality, but I agree that the show doesn't seem quite as good as before Leo left, and I felt that the days with Leo/Patrick/Megan/Martin/Morgan were the best. I think that the problem that it has now is just that both Patrick and Kevin are hardcore geeks and they don't have the Leo buffer to kind of tone it down.
For me, there are only two other notable shows that I'll watch: X-Play, which has good content regardless of how critics may feel about Adam Sessler & Morgan Webb, and Call For Help, which is a great show for new computer users (my mother-in-law), and has some interesting and entertaining bits for the more savvy.
In any event, things haven't been quite the same since all the chaos with Leo Laporte, but I hope Comcast get's things straightened out... I don't have much use for television, and if Tech TV goes down the tubes, then I'll have no use for TV.
There's plenty of stuff going on with the Super Bowl that're Slashdot-worthy. Tech TV's gave the technology of Super Bowl a fair bit of attention last week.. take a look.
On a side note, is there any place on the net to download Super Bowl commercials?
I think that there is a new wave of people on eBay that forget they are dealing with people and not businesses.
I disagree. It's not some strange buyer misconception -- eBay has become a place where businesses go to sell their goods.
I've bid in auctions where the seller had over 30000 feedbacks. You don't get that many feedbacks by selling casually.
There's even a market for selling tools that are most definitely geared towards the professional seller -- see some here. These tools manage listings, collection of buyer information, correspondence (automatically send e-mails to winning bidders), and even allow canned feedback responses. The only reason why you'd need software like this is if you were selling in large volumes (eBay's Seller Assistant Pro is even a subscription-based package, so you have to be actively selling to offset the monthly fee).
The point that I'm trying to make is that it's easy to forget that you're dealing with people when the e-mails you get from the seller are all automated, and the feedback that you get is just some canned message.
Of course, most of the time, the commercial sites that actually have income from banner ads easily withstand the Slashdot Effect. So perhaps we could draw the line at sites that don't have ads. They are, after all, much more likely to buckle under the pressure of all those unexpected hits. But what happens if I cache the site, and they update themselves? Once again, I'm transmitting data that I shouldn't be, only this time my cache is out of date!
Who cares? For them to get noticed on Slashdot, the interesting bits will still appear in the cache. Also, having the content cached doesn't mean that a link to the original site couldn't still be provided.
I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?
Bullshit. If I want "breaking news", I go to CNN. I can't remember the last time I read a Slashdot article where the content of the article was time sensitive. It's just casual information to entertain and maybe educate the bored geek. Six hours is nothing. By the time Slashdot gets the news, it's already out in the open. It's not like they're going to get scooped.
Not inconceivable, but I don't really think it's worth the work. Most of the sites that are Slashdotted are prepared for it, and the sites that get smashed usually are caught completely off guard; they wouldn't know of this mysterious opt-out meta tag. (See also Caching Slashdot Stories).
So if the site doesn't have the magical opt-out tag or extra instruction tag, then fire up your e-mail client and get permission. Or just cache it and be done with it.
People who put up websites should recognize that people are going to look at it. Sometimes, a lot of people might look at it, as a result of a link from Slashdot or any of hundreds of other sites. People who bitch and moan about being linked to from Slashdot remind me of the companies who whine when people link to "confidential" webpages -- guess what, if it's on the web, it's not confidential.
The point is that it would be a decent thing for Slashdot to provide some mechanism to minimize the inconvenience caused by having a site or page linked on the front page. The points listed in the FAQ are weak. The bottom line is that some sort of cacheing would benefit both the owners of the content being linked (it wouldn't nuke their site) and the readers of Slashdot (no more seeing a cool story on Slashdot only to have to wait to read it because the Slashdot effective is already underway).
Truth be told, there is already an informal Slashdot cache -- you often see kind users copying the meat of the page into a comment which always gets modded up to +5. Further proof that an official Slashdot cache would be well received.
The only real argument against a cache would be the load that it would place on the Slashdot servers. They are tuned to handle their current content, but I wonder if they would be able to handle the load of serving up all that extra content in addition to the stuff that they already do.
Innovative and interesting games not making it out of Japan for one reason or another has plagued the console market for a long time. Often, it does boil down to interested consumers having to order in the import to play on their foreign or modded (the best legitimate use of mod chips) machines, but Fresh Games (heavy flash site) hopes to change things. An excerpt from their site:
The Fresh Games label was created because there is a wealth of incredible games that come out in Japan and, for whatever reason, are not sold in the US and Europe. A lot of people are importing these games, but we wanted hardcore gamers everywhere to be able to buy these games at their local store without having to deal with mod-chips and exorbitant costs. On the surface these games are very "Quirky" or "Odd" but when you get beneath the surface, you realize that the game-play is outstanding, the depth these games have to offer is incredible, and the polish and attention to detail that is put in to them is obvious.
Video Games are an art form in Japan and we wanted that represented here in it's purest form. Not another character based sequel, not another movie license, not another "extreme sports" game. That's what we call the corporate formula. We wanted to break some rules, and break some of the barriers that exist in this industry in regards to "What type of games do people really want to play?". Many of the major magazines wrote that games like Mad Maestro and Mister Mosquito were brilliant games, and it was a shame that these games would never see the light of the day outside of Japan, where they are both top 10 selling titles. We agreed that they are brilliant and decided to take a chance by releasing them here.
Not that this means that we'll see Taiko no Tatsujin brought over, but you never know.
Ever checked out Lycroris [lycoris.com]? Looks familiar doesn't it. Thought and design theft go both ways though, notice what happens when you push "tab" with a half-typed file/directory in winXP (and I think 2k) command prompt? Hmmm, somehow I think that one got ripped off from the linux (perhaps unix or previous other) community, was it GPL'ed?
Or the other possibility is that some sort of keyboard shortcut is necessary once you start looking at file names longer than 8.3, and tab's about the best key on the keyboard for that because it has no meaning on the command line (just more white space) and isn't likely to be interpretted by any encapsulating windowing system. Microsoft didn't steal the idea, it just makes sense.
Linux systems can get a lot by mimicking windows graphical designs and ideas. MS can learn about (but probably won't) useful functionality and ability to grow from linux.
There are two things that can be considered "good" about the Microsoft interface:
Windows is so common that almost everyone is familiar with how things work in the Windows interface. It's a plus, for example, for an employer to not have to take a new employee and show them how to use the interface. This doesn't mean that the Windows interface is better, it just means that it's more common.
user interface guidelines make for a consistant experience. You've got all these window managers and all these different styles of widgets, it must be hard to develop some Open Source Graphical User Interface Guidelines handbook (though I wouldn't be surprised if there is just such an effort somewhere out there). Microsoft's got UI guidelines, as does Apple. This is where the Linux desktop movement could use some improvement, and really, that's about the only place.
The game was *average*. If it had come out on schedule, it would have been great, but it was delayed for a loooong time (Ion Storm had some severe internal problems). Daikatana's biggest problem, outside of the time that it took to get it out, was the volume of hype that it had accumulated. "John Romero's Going to Make You His Bitch" type stuff. And then when it came out, it didn't live up to what gamers were expecting.
I don't see much of a deviation here. For a kid, the ocean's a pretty cool setting... lots of mysterious creatures and such floating about.
Don't be fooled, either, Pixar always manages to make their movies interesting to both children and adults. It may look like something that only a 5 year old can enjoy, but I'd be very surprised if that were truly the case.
M$ is extremely arrogant. The only time this has been repressed at all is when M$ was trying to say, "See, aren't we a good company?" Even then, they have shown an arrogance that is unbelievable and shows that they truly don't understand that anybody has any rights other M$ and that M$ is always right. Now that they've only been slapped on the hand, we can, of course, expect the arrogant behavior to get worse.
How is this behaviour different from that of any other large North American company? When organizations get to be a certain size, they become used to a certain degree of ass kissing from the people that they do business with. Microsoft is no different. You're absolutely right: all through the legal procedings leading up to this, they tried very much to play the part of the victim, being unduly harrassed for the simple fact that they've been successful. Any other company in that situation would have done the same thing.
More and more companies are switching to Open Source Software because they're fed up with M$. If M$ were reigned in, that would reduce the frustration other companies have with them. On the other hand, since they have essentially no consequences that hurt them, as their attitude gets worse, so will frustration.
Don't fool yourself. More and more companies are switching to Open Source software because it's free and because you can get the source. Microsoft's business practices have little to do with an organization's decision to move to Open Source, rather it's the bottom line that's that motivator. You're right in saying that this may be a positive for the Open Source movement in the long run, not because Microsoft will piss more people off, but because if Microsoft were forced to open up their API's a bit it would enable companies to do more with Windows, and would thus remove some motivation to switch to Open Source alternatives.
It's like being a kid in school and being beat up by the bully. As the bully's arrogance increases, he thinks he's more and more immune to what anyone can do. Eventually he tries to take on the whole class, everyone sees what he's really like, and suddenly the bully is left standing there, like the Emperor in his new clothes.
In Microsoft's case, it's not a matter of thinking they are immune, it is a matter that they are immune. Windows is too ubiquitous.
M$ attitude is a good reason for people to switch from them. The worse it gets, the more will switch. The Judge has just given them permission to show their worst behavior. Just how much of that will the market bear?
No, Microsoft's attitude is a good reason for an individual to dislike them. It's not a good reason for a company or your average Joe Computer User to switch to Open Source. The real reasons for people to switch from Microsoft products are purely fiscal. The cost of software licenses adds up, and it's not just Microsoft licenses... Oracle, Novell, etc. all add up. There's a correlation between an Open Source project's success at permeating the marketplace and the cost of licenses from their corresponding closed source commercial products.
Can you imagine purchasing a car and not being allowed to install a turbo, or better exhaust...or modifying it to run on fryer oil?
Your analogy isn't valid. Here's one that is: Can you imagine purchasing a car for less than it cost the manufacturer to make it? This fictional car takes a special fuel that is only produced by the car manufacturer. The idea is that the company can make money (which is the goal of all companies) on the sale of the special fuel and offset the initial loss on the sale of the vehicle.
Now imagine that someone came along with a device that allowed you to *steal* the special fuel. You just plug it into the car and voila! You can get the fuel for free. How can you possible expect the auto manufacturer to sit still while the other company makes money on their magical little fuel stealer? The simple answer is that you can't.
This whole Microsoft vs. Lik Sang discussion has gotten so tired. The fact that they let people install Linux on their machines or run non-MS sanctioned software is almost completely irrelevant to Microsoft's motives for attacking Lik Sang. Sure, the handful of people in the world who buy an XBox for the sole purpose of running Linux on it must make MS cranky, but all the other people who buy it so that they can put in bigger hard drives and download pirated games are the ones that really piss them off.
The reason Nintendo's still around is because they had a lot of momentum from the Super Nintendo. If it weren't for the Game Boy and Pokemon, they may not have survived past the N64. Things are a lot different now with the Gamecube -- Mario Sunshine rocks, and there are a number of games too look forward to in the coming months -- Metroid and Zelda to name two.
The fact that Nintendo makes interesting games is also surely a factor in their success, but the same could be said about Sega, and they lost the console war. At least they're still producing games.
Sony got lucky. They won the most recent generation of the console war because they beat Nintendo to market and scored Square. They made it easy for developers to make games for the Playstation by providing good C libraries and later on, lower-level access to the machine to let developers squeeze the last bits of goodness out of the machine. The PS2 has a rocky start because developers found it difficult to program for it, but the fact that the PS2 plays PS1 games, and because the PS1 was so successful, they managed to carry forward a lot of the developer support that they had with PS1. The end result is that even though the PS2 is a less powerful machine than the other two major consoles, it's got a much better library. If I had to pick one console to buy, it would be the PS2, if for no other reason than the fact that it's got so many solid titles.
Love or hate Microsoft, they're doing the smart thing to buy developers to secure exclusive titles for XBox. I'm not sure how you can say that MS buys companies and then ruins them -- Halo's a pretty fun game, and I'd have a hard time believing that Rare won't produce some pretty high quality titles in the future. MS is just giving consumers a reason to buy their console, and there's nothing wrong with that. Rare developed games exclusively for Nintendo's machines, and now they're going to turn around and do it for Microsoft. Hardly a big change for them.
The real reason why MS is a "smaller player" is simply the fact that there are a lot of console bigots out there. Generally speaking, console users have strong loyalties. Nintendo's been around for ages. Sony proved themselves with Playstation. Now Microsoft has to prove that the XBox is a viable platform.
The final opinion that I'd like to voice is the fact that title exclusivity is a *good* thing. For console manufacturers, exclusivity gives consumers a clear reason to buy their machine over all the others that are available. The fact that the Playstation got Final Fantasy VII was a non-trivial factor in its early success. If you're a Mario fan, there's one console that you need to buy: Gamecube. If you were a sports game fan in the 16-bit days, Genesis was the way to go. When you haven't got exclusivity, you have chaos. It vexes me when I buy a game (Soccer Slam for Gamecube is an example) that I play and enjoy, and then a few months later, another version of the game, with more bells and whistles, is released for a different console (in this example, the XBox). The differences between the two versions aren't significant enough to warrant buying the game for both consoles, but nevertheless, I would still enjoy those extra goodies, small though they may be.
I'm not a SuSE user. I think that I've got SuSE 5.something on CD somewhere around, but I never did more than install it and check it out, and in the future, it's pretty unlikely that I'll use SuSE. That said, I don't think that the problems that the author found were quite as severe as they're made out to be.
In my mind, the only reason why there are different distributions is because there are different kinds of users. I think that Red Hat is probably the best choice for new Linux users... installation is trivial, the learning curve is pretty gentle. If you're a Linux newbie, might as well get Red Hat, especially if you're not a programmer type. You're more likely to have a smooth ride.
My point is that I think that most of the viewer's complaints were made against features of YaST2 that seemed overly complex, but I think that for the most part, most of the complaints weren't valid. For the kind of user who would use SuSE, it's probably just a slicker way of installing the OS, and I'm sure that SuSE users will appreciate it. For those that would be intimidated or confused, there are other avenues to get up and running with Linux that may be less daunting.
While there are probably a lot of corps out there thinking about switching to linux from unix/windows, there are also an increasing amount of home users searching for an alternate desktop environment.
I have a hard time believing that the amount of home users searching for an alternative desktop is increasing. Unless you mean people are being wooed by Apple. The average home user is happy with their computer so long as it does what they want. Which is normally to send and receive e-mail, browse the web listen to MP3s and play games. These people like Windows. It does everything that they want. The Linux desktops on the other hand, let you send and receive e-mail, browse the web, listen to MP3s and play games (albeit a lot fewer commercial titles than are available for Windows). The point: there's no difference. No reason to switch. There is, in fact, a disincentive to switch, because Linux has a reputation of being a computer geek's OS, which is probably pretty intimidating for average Joe User.
For people comfortable using Linux there still isn't much motivation to switch their home computers from Windows. There's nothing that Linux can do on the desktop that Windows can't. And Windows does many things better.
My point isn't to bash the Linux desktop efforts... indeed there's not much to bash. They're reliable, work well, and look good. I just think that the number of people who make the switch from Windows is more constant than anything else, and if the number is increasing, it's Apple that's getting the converts, not Linux.
Plays games (hopefully, the Xbox will have better exclusive games than just Halo and Shenmue II).
The xbox has, of late, had pretty weak titles. Just around the corner, though, there are a number of interesting candidates: that Star Wars RPG by Bioware, Panzer Dragoon, and Psychonauts all have a bit of my attention. The guys at Penny Arcade just had a little discussion about the Xbox and it's lineup of games.
Plugs into a TV (which every American has), monitor (which most people can get for cheap).
Plugging a computer into a TV doesn't really intrigue me. It's got crappy resolution and is generally not set up properly for you to do any real work with. I have one a Shuttle Spacewalker hooked up to the TV in the living room, and it's only really good for playing divx's on a screen larger than the monitor.
Runs Linux for network admin types (imagine a few of these suckers in your business - $200 for a Staroffice/web browsing/java running machine).
I think that, for the most part, getting Linux running on the xbox is just a novelty. It's right up there with running Linux on PS2 or Linux on the Dreamcast. Cute, but really pretty useless. The other thing that concerns me is the quality of the hardware itself. Microsoft's taking a hit on each and every unit that they sell, so it makes sense that they'd try to reduce their loss by putting lower-end components into the case. I think that it's probably quite good to play games on, but I question its reliability for anything more intensive. Especially in a business. Then again, the price is about right to try it out, and if it doesn't work, it's not much of a loss.
I think that I'm not saying anything that people haven't already said, but there are two things that I value most:
Get the software into my hands. Don't cripple it. Ideally, don't even put an expiry on it... make it freely available for evaluation and charge for the right to distribute it or use it outside of a development environment. The idea is to let me play with it, get used to using it and see what it can do (whatever it is).
Provide strong support. Microsoft does a really good job of this. The developer documentation for all their products is very good. High quality documentation can reduce the learning curve and make whatever product you're selling more useful more quickly. Make getting at the information easy.
Is LOASC (Linux On A Street Corner). The first one's free... and so are all the ones after.
Instead of lecithin, vitamin and insulin, we could have crack, lsd and heroin. You could even have a marijuana distro, which of course would be a gateway distro.
There's apparently been a bunch of research into their use and if I recall correctly, one of their biggest benefits is that they simplify complex menu navigation. Or something like that, anyways.
They've already found use in other places... the Sims and Neverwinter Nights are the two that come to mind.
Actually I think that Slashdot had a link to an article about this kind of interface a while back, talking about its use in the Sims. There were even some examples of pie menus in JavaScript that you could goof around with in your browser.
If I remember the episode, part of the problem was also that the race that was going extinct was inhibiting the planet's second race from growing. My recollection is probably off a bit, but I think that the choice was more along the lines of giving the dying race what it needed to survive versus letting evolution elevate the less-advanced race to dominant species. It's kind of like (though off by a ways) if you were given a choice to save the dinosaurs who were going to be eradicated by some meteor-induced ice-age, would you do it, given that it might destroy the natural progression of life on the planet? Kind of a crappy analogy, but it's the best I can think of at the moment.
In any event, I actually really enjoyed that episode. In my mind, at least, the Doctor's dilemma was a lot more profound than you make it sound. Without the prime directive as a guiding principle, there's a lot more room for this series to be interesting.
Isn't he scheduled to appear in Star Trek: Enterprise?
Re:A link to the article would have been nice...
on
.NET for Apache
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· Score: 2, Insightful
First of all, this is bad. Microsoft are not adopting the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" ideal. Apache dominates web servers. No doubt about it. [netcraft.com] To defeat this, Microsoft are going to do what they do best: embrace, extend, erradicate.
More likely, Microsoft is just acknowledging Apache's leadership in the server arena and wants to make sure that they take advantage of it's open source nature to get in some.net support for it to help boost the success of.net in general.
Following initial proof of concept, first stage deployments and so forth, Microsoft will begin the trouble. It will strangely cease to work. Apache will be to blame and sites will like have to apply patches from Microsoft or just deal with them. At the same time, IIS will lack these problems. They will work to create inroads into the *nix space with Win.NET and IIS.
Who's to say MS will be providing the.Net functionality? Maybe they're going to provide funding and technical support to have the Apache project implement it. Accusing MS of having some devious plan to undermine Apache is a little premature.
Keep Microsoft out of open source. They have no business being here. Instead, Apache people should look at either of the two.NET initiatives that are Free.
I disagree. Get everyone, including Microsoft, into Open Source. Get the hobby programmers, the after-hours professional programmers, the big corporations. Bring them all in, get them to contribute to and use Open Source software.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony filed an appeal and apparently got a stay on the injunction that would have forced them to stop selling their consoles and infringing software. You can read about it here.
The problem is that the average user can't be trusted to ensure that they are properly protected against network-borne threats, and it's gotten to the point that someone's got to intervene. Who better to do it than Microsoft? Put the check into every copy of Windows, and make sure that you at least alert the user to the fact that they're not adequately protected. This is the only way to get the attention of otherwise blissfully ignorant users.
I don't recall reading whether or not the user is able to disable this check, but I'd even hesitate to provide an off switch. I look through
It's not like sp2 is going to be a silver bullet... there are probably lots of win2k/me/98 machines that are still getting lots of use that won't benefit from these improvements to windows security, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Hopefully the number of infected machines will decrease over time.
One final point too, regarding your M$ World Domination Paranoia, you're probably right that there is an opportunity for Microsoft to leverage this into some business opportunity. I'm inclined to think, for the time being at least, that the little checker program is a good way to go. MS could just have easily skipped the checker and imposed their own antivirus/firewall solution... not running Norton? No problem: here's MS Antivirus. (Though I guess they've got the firewall thing going on, so maybe it's just a matter of time).
But finding life is sexy. People get all excited at the thought of actually finding extra-terrestrial life, and that enthusiasm probably translates to budget increases for NASA.
Also, it's not like that's the only stuff that NASA's got on the go... this is just the sort of stuff that gets lots of attention from the media and public.
I get a completely different impression than you of Kevin Rose's personality, but I agree that the show doesn't seem quite as good as before Leo left, and I felt that the days with Leo/Patrick/Megan/Martin/Morgan were the best. I think that the problem that it has now is just that both Patrick and Kevin are hardcore geeks and they don't have the Leo buffer to kind of tone it down.
For me, there are only two other notable shows that I'll watch: X-Play, which has good content regardless of how critics may feel about Adam Sessler & Morgan Webb, and Call For Help, which is a great show for new computer users (my mother-in-law), and has some interesting and entertaining bits for the more savvy.
In any event, things haven't been quite the same since all the chaos with Leo Laporte, but I hope Comcast get's things straightened out... I don't have much use for television, and if Tech TV goes down the tubes, then I'll have no use for TV.
On a side note, is there any place on the net to download Super Bowl commercials?
I disagree. It's not some strange buyer misconception -- eBay has become a place where businesses go to sell their goods.
I've bid in auctions where the seller had over 30000 feedbacks. You don't get that many feedbacks by selling casually.
There's even a market for selling tools that are most definitely geared towards the professional seller -- see some here. These tools manage listings, collection of buyer information, correspondence (automatically send e-mails to winning bidders), and even allow canned feedback responses. The only reason why you'd need software like this is if you were selling in large volumes (eBay's Seller Assistant Pro is even a subscription-based package, so you have to be actively selling to offset the monthly fee).
The point that I'm trying to make is that it's easy to forget that you're dealing with people when the e-mails you get from the seller are all automated, and the feedback that you get is just some canned message.
Who cares? For them to get noticed on Slashdot, the interesting bits will still appear in the cache. Also, having the content cached doesn't mean that a link to the original site couldn't still be provided.
Bullshit. If I want "breaking news", I go to CNN. I can't remember the last time I read a Slashdot article where the content of the article was time sensitive. It's just casual information to entertain and maybe educate the bored geek. Six hours is nothing. By the time Slashdot gets the news, it's already out in the open. It's not like they're going to get scooped.
So if the site doesn't have the magical opt-out tag or extra instruction tag, then fire up your e-mail client and get permission. Or just cache it and be done with it.
The point is that it would be a decent thing for Slashdot to provide some mechanism to minimize the inconvenience caused by having a site or page linked on the front page. The points listed in the FAQ are weak. The bottom line is that some sort of cacheing would benefit both the owners of the content being linked (it wouldn't nuke their site) and the readers of Slashdot (no more seeing a cool story on Slashdot only to have to wait to read it because the Slashdot effective is already underway).
Truth be told, there is already an informal Slashdot cache -- you often see kind users copying the meat of the page into a comment which always gets modded up to +5. Further proof that an official Slashdot cache would be well received.
The only real argument against a cache would be the load that it would place on the Slashdot servers. They are tuned to handle their current content, but I wonder if they would be able to handle the load of serving up all that extra content in addition to the stuff that they already do.
Not that this means that we'll see Taiko no Tatsujin brought over, but you never know.
Ever checked out Lycroris [lycoris.com]? Looks familiar doesn't it. Thought and design theft go both ways though, notice what happens when you push "tab" with a half-typed file/directory in winXP (and I think 2k) command prompt? Hmmm, somehow I think that one got ripped off from the linux (perhaps unix or previous other) community, was it GPL'ed?
Or the other possibility is that some sort of keyboard shortcut is necessary once you start looking at file names longer than 8.3, and tab's about the best key on the keyboard for that because it has no meaning on the command line (just more white space) and isn't likely to be interpretted by any encapsulating windowing system. Microsoft didn't steal the idea, it just makes sense.
Linux systems can get a lot by mimicking windows graphical designs and ideas. MS can learn about (but probably won't) useful functionality and ability to grow from linux.
There are two things that can be considered "good" about the Microsoft interface:
The game was *average*. If it had come out on schedule, it would have been great, but it was delayed for a loooong time (Ion Storm had some severe internal problems). Daikatana's biggest problem, outside of the time that it took to get it out, was the volume of hype that it had accumulated. "John Romero's Going to Make You His Bitch" type stuff. And then when it came out, it didn't live up to what gamers were expecting.
Don't be fooled, either, Pixar always manages to make their movies interesting to both children and adults. It may look like something that only a 5 year old can enjoy, but I'd be very surprised if that were truly the case.
The short answer is Steve Jobs: Pixar is his baby, and Quicktime is an Apple technology, and Apple, of course, is another Jobs baby.
M$ is extremely arrogant. The only time this has been repressed at all is when M$ was trying to say, "See, aren't we a good company?" Even then, they have shown an arrogance that is unbelievable and shows that they truly don't understand that anybody has any rights other M$ and that M$ is always right. Now that they've only been slapped on the hand, we can, of course, expect the arrogant behavior to get worse.
How is this behaviour different from that of any other large North American company? When organizations get to be a certain size, they become used to a certain degree of ass kissing from the people that they do business with. Microsoft is no different. You're absolutely right: all through the legal procedings leading up to this, they tried very much to play the part of the victim, being unduly harrassed for the simple fact that they've been successful. Any other company in that situation would have done the same thing.
More and more companies are switching to Open Source Software because they're fed up with M$. If M$ were reigned in, that would reduce the frustration other companies have with them. On the other hand, since they have essentially no consequences that hurt them, as their attitude gets worse, so will frustration.
Don't fool yourself. More and more companies are switching to Open Source software because it's free and because you can get the source. Microsoft's business practices have little to do with an organization's decision to move to Open Source, rather it's the bottom line that's that motivator. You're right in saying that this may be a positive for the Open Source movement in the long run, not because Microsoft will piss more people off, but because if Microsoft were forced to open up their API's a bit it would enable companies to do more with Windows, and would thus remove some motivation to switch to Open Source alternatives.
It's like being a kid in school and being beat up by the bully. As the bully's arrogance increases, he thinks he's more and more immune to what anyone can do. Eventually he tries to take on the whole class, everyone sees what he's really like, and suddenly the bully is left standing there, like the Emperor in his new clothes.
In Microsoft's case, it's not a matter of thinking they are immune, it is a matter that they are immune. Windows is too ubiquitous.
M$ attitude is a good reason for people to switch from them. The worse it gets, the more will switch. The Judge has just given them permission to show their worst behavior. Just how much of that will the market bear?
No, Microsoft's attitude is a good reason for an individual to dislike them. It's not a good reason for a company or your average Joe Computer User to switch to Open Source. The real reasons for people to switch from Microsoft products are purely fiscal. The cost of software licenses adds up, and it's not just Microsoft licenses... Oracle, Novell, etc. all add up. There's a correlation between an Open Source project's success at permeating the marketplace and the cost of licenses from their corresponding closed source commercial products.
Now imagine that someone came along with a device that allowed you to *steal* the special fuel. You just plug it into the car and voila! You can get the fuel for free. How can you possible expect the auto manufacturer to sit still while the other company makes money on their magical little fuel stealer? The simple answer is that you can't.
This whole Microsoft vs. Lik Sang discussion has gotten so tired. The fact that they let people install Linux on their machines or run non-MS sanctioned software is almost completely irrelevant to Microsoft's motives for attacking Lik Sang. Sure, the handful of people in the world who buy an XBox for the sole purpose of running Linux on it must make MS cranky, but all the other people who buy it so that they can put in bigger hard drives and download pirated games are the ones that really piss them off.
The fact that Nintendo makes interesting games is also surely a factor in their success, but the same could be said about Sega, and they lost the console war. At least they're still producing games.
Sony got lucky. They won the most recent generation of the console war because they beat Nintendo to market and scored Square. They made it easy for developers to make games for the Playstation by providing good C libraries and later on, lower-level access to the machine to let developers squeeze the last bits of goodness out of the machine. The PS2 has a rocky start because developers found it difficult to program for it, but the fact that the PS2 plays PS1 games, and because the PS1 was so successful, they managed to carry forward a lot of the developer support that they had with PS1. The end result is that even though the PS2 is a less powerful machine than the other two major consoles, it's got a much better library. If I had to pick one console to buy, it would be the PS2, if for no other reason than the fact that it's got so many solid titles.
Love or hate Microsoft, they're doing the smart thing to buy developers to secure exclusive titles for XBox. I'm not sure how you can say that MS buys companies and then ruins them -- Halo's a pretty fun game, and I'd have a hard time believing that Rare won't produce some pretty high quality titles in the future. MS is just giving consumers a reason to buy their console, and there's nothing wrong with that. Rare developed games exclusively for Nintendo's machines, and now they're going to turn around and do it for Microsoft. Hardly a big change for them.
The real reason why MS is a "smaller player" is simply the fact that there are a lot of console bigots out there. Generally speaking, console users have strong loyalties. Nintendo's been around for ages. Sony proved themselves with Playstation. Now Microsoft has to prove that the XBox is a viable platform.
The final opinion that I'd like to voice is the fact that title exclusivity is a *good* thing. For console manufacturers, exclusivity gives consumers a clear reason to buy their machine over all the others that are available. The fact that the Playstation got Final Fantasy VII was a non-trivial factor in its early success. If you're a Mario fan, there's one console that you need to buy: Gamecube. If you were a sports game fan in the 16-bit days, Genesis was the way to go. When you haven't got exclusivity, you have chaos. It vexes me when I buy a game (Soccer Slam for Gamecube is an example) that I play and enjoy, and then a few months later, another version of the game, with more bells and whistles, is released for a different console (in this example, the XBox). The differences between the two versions aren't significant enough to warrant buying the game for both consoles, but nevertheless, I would still enjoy those extra goodies, small though they may be.
In my mind, the only reason why there are different distributions is because there are different kinds of users. I think that Red Hat is probably the best choice for new Linux users... installation is trivial, the learning curve is pretty gentle. If you're a Linux newbie, might as well get Red Hat, especially if you're not a programmer type. You're more likely to have a smooth ride.
My point is that I think that most of the viewer's complaints were made against features of YaST2 that seemed overly complex, but I think that for the most part, most of the complaints weren't valid. For the kind of user who would use SuSE, it's probably just a slicker way of installing the OS, and I'm sure that SuSE users will appreciate it. For those that would be intimidated or confused, there are other avenues to get up and running with Linux that may be less daunting.
I have a hard time believing that the amount of home users searching for an alternative desktop is increasing. Unless you mean people are being wooed by Apple. The average home user is happy with their computer so long as it does what they want. Which is normally to send and receive e-mail, browse the web listen to MP3s and play games. These people like Windows. It does everything that they want. The Linux desktops on the other hand, let you send and receive e-mail, browse the web, listen to MP3s and play games (albeit a lot fewer commercial titles than are available for Windows). The point: there's no difference. No reason to switch. There is, in fact, a disincentive to switch, because Linux has a reputation of being a computer geek's OS, which is probably pretty intimidating for average Joe User.
For people comfortable using Linux there still isn't much motivation to switch their home computers from Windows. There's nothing that Linux can do on the desktop that Windows can't. And Windows does many things better.
My point isn't to bash the Linux desktop efforts... indeed there's not much to bash. They're reliable, work well, and look good. I just think that the number of people who make the switch from Windows is more constant than anything else, and if the number is increasing, it's Apple that's getting the converts, not Linux.
The xbox has, of late, had pretty weak titles. Just around the corner, though, there are a number of interesting candidates: that Star Wars RPG by Bioware, Panzer Dragoon, and Psychonauts all have a bit of my attention. The guys at Penny Arcade just had a little discussion about the Xbox and it's lineup of games.
Plugging a computer into a TV doesn't really intrigue me. It's got crappy resolution and is generally not set up properly for you to do any real work with. I have one a Shuttle Spacewalker hooked up to the TV in the living room, and it's only really good for playing divx's on a screen larger than the monitor.
I think that, for the most part, getting Linux running on the xbox is just a novelty. It's right up there with running Linux on PS2 or Linux on the Dreamcast. Cute, but really pretty useless. The other thing that concerns me is the quality of the hardware itself. Microsoft's taking a hit on each and every unit that they sell, so it makes sense that they'd try to reduce their loss by putting lower-end components into the case. I think that it's probably quite good to play games on, but I question its reliability for anything more intensive. Especially in a business. Then again, the price is about right to try it out, and if it doesn't work, it's not much of a loss.
Get the software into my hands. Don't cripple it. Ideally, don't even put an expiry on it... make it freely available for evaluation and charge for the right to distribute it or use it outside of a development environment. The idea is to let me play with it, get used to using it and see what it can do (whatever it is).
Provide strong support. Microsoft does a really good job of this. The developer documentation for all their products is very good. High quality documentation can reduce the learning curve and make whatever product you're selling more useful more quickly. Make getting at the information easy.
Instead of lecithin, vitamin and insulin, we could have crack, lsd and heroin. You could even have a marijuana distro, which of course would be a gateway distro.
They've already found use in other places... the Sims and Neverwinter Nights are the two that come to mind.
Actually I think that Slashdot had a link to an article about this kind of interface a while back, talking about its use in the Sims. There were even some examples of pie menus in JavaScript that you could goof around with in your browser.
If I remember the episode, part of the problem was also that the race that was going extinct was inhibiting the planet's second race from growing. My recollection is probably off a bit, but I think that the choice was more along the lines of giving the dying race what it needed to survive versus letting evolution elevate the less-advanced race to dominant species. It's kind of like (though off by a ways) if you were given a choice to save the dinosaurs who were going to be eradicated by some meteor-induced ice-age, would you do it, given that it might destroy the natural progression of life on the planet? Kind of a crappy analogy, but it's the best I can think of at the moment.
In any event, I actually really enjoyed that episode. In my mind, at least, the Doctor's dilemma was a lot more profound than you make it sound. Without the prime directive as a guiding principle, there's a lot more room for this series to be interesting.
Isn't he scheduled to appear in Star Trek: Enterprise?
More likely, Microsoft is just acknowledging Apache's leadership in the server arena and wants to make sure that they take advantage of it's open source nature to get in some .net support for it to help boost the success of .net in general.
Who's to say MS will be providing the .Net functionality? Maybe they're going to provide funding and technical support to have the Apache project implement it. Accusing MS of having some devious plan to undermine Apache is a little premature.
I disagree. Get everyone, including Microsoft, into Open Source. Get the hobby programmers, the after-hours professional programmers, the big corporations. Bring them all in, get them to contribute to and use Open Source software.