As an unabashed and yet notoriously picky (read: pain in the ass to buy for) sci-fi fan, here are a few of my favorite books of 2003.
I just finished China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and I am flabbergasted. Mieville's city-state of New Crobuzon is utterly fantastic and his clarity of vision for his world, in my opinion, is the kind you only come across once in a great while. I will most certainly be picking up his newest novel, The Scar, as soon as I finish a couple of books curently in my queue.
I was delighted that in the last year (or perhaps a little bit more), the great Samuel R. Delany's books have begun coming back into print. Three of his novels, Dhalgren, Nova and the duplex Babel-17/Empire Star, along with his short story collection Aye, and Gomorrah... and other stories are all truly wonderful sci-fi. If you decide to read him, start with Aye, and Gomorrah..., Babel-17/Empire Star and then Nova; when you think you have a handle on him, tackle Dhalgren. Tackling Dhalgren is no easy task, but the journey is completely worth it.
Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow now has two books in print (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and A Place So Foregin and Eight More) and a third on the way. Both books (a novel and a short story collection respectively) showcase a writer I am quite sure we'll be seeing a whole lot more of in the future. Doctorow's writing reads very much like the first writer of the next generation of sci-fi writers; you won't be disappointed.
Cyberpunk poster boy William Gibson also had a new book this year, Pattern Recognition. As his writing pressed forward, Gibson has slipped further and further from futurity into today, creating science fiction that happens in today's world. His latest work is an interesting story of Cayce Pollard, a cool-hunter with a severe allergy to brands. The story is, as with all things Gibson, tightly written and as focused as a laser beam on its subject. A great read for all.
I sure hope this helps. I know not all the books came out specifically in 2003, but I read them all in 2003 (along with countless others) and I think that's close enough for me to sneak them in.
"Microsoft is deliberately seeking information they can use against Linux. They will make use of any unfavorable comments about Linux in their own propaganda."
Of course they will, but Linux users can always say, "Hey, Microsoft knows they have an inferior product, so they came to us for help." As much as/. people hate Windows, this is, I think, a good thing.
First, by asking Linux users what they can do to improve Windows, it is a de facto admission that Windows is an inferior product. Second, maybe we could get some good things out of it, like fully-documented APIs and more-open protocols from Microsoft.
However, don't expect Microsoft to release jack under the GPL. Put it out of your mind, because it'll never happen. And don't expect that Linux users are going to go easy on Microsoft. We have put them in our sights and will take them down, not through legal wrangling, but because the open-source community will out-build them.
The article was well-written and, I felt, fairly objective. My thanks to Mr. Bourke for keeping a level head when many are screaming bloody blue murder. For those who just want the meat, here it is:
UnixWare costs more than other commercial Unix systems.
UnixWare is not as up-to-date as most other commercial Unix systems.
There is a dearth of commercial and enterprise apps for UnixWare.
There is a virtual vacuum where a user-base ought to be.
The litigation. 'Nuff said.
These factors precluded the reviewer from really thinking of a single situation in which he could recommend UnixWare 7.1.3 as an installable option.
So that's it, folks; we now have more than a single complaint. We know what SCO is after: they want all *nixes nixed, so they can claim the market as theirs and theirs alone. But the *nixes are not successful because there's only one; they are successful because there are computers all over the world running a variety of Unix and Unix-like platforms.
Bad idea revealing that they are looking into the BSDs, though. Two reasons: first, the BSD case was already tried and closed. Second, the statements can likely be used to prove that SCO is unwilling to play nice.
Most Unixes out there are perfectly legally licensed versions. If SCO goes after IBM, Linux and BSD, it's a safe bet that Sun, HP and all the other Unix vendors are next, and they're probably calling their lawyers right now, telling them to sharpen their knives.
The fact that SCO wants to go after the BSDs goes to show that they don't understand how the *nix world works. My reading on this (and I'm not a lawyer) is that SCO wants to be like Microsoft; one OS, distributed by one company, binary-only, and DMCA'd up the wazoo.
Wow, talk about bad moves! If there's one thing a small company with a limited bankroll like SCO should not be doing, it's trying to push around a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that has buttloads of cash with which to fight.
Wait, does this mean we have to side with the studios now?
You're mistaking the big difference; The penguin may have evolved into a sort of brand, but not because it was forced down people's throats.
The Linux penguin was not a branded effort to make all Linux distros look the same, because Linus did not say, "Okay, everyone, I want you to use the penguin in your logos and ad copy so everyone knows 'Linux = penguins'." Rather, he adopted the penguin as a mascot purely because it amused him, and everyone picked up and ran with it. The Linux penguin is, in a sense, only a brand in that people voluntarily use the penguin; it is the un-brand. In some cases, distro makers have actually eschewed using the penguin (Red Hat, who has a true branding effort, leaps immediately to mind; when was the last time you saw Tux on a default Red Hat screen?)
And we are all wearing the same jerseys when we use a Mozilla product, because when you click the throbber in Firebird or Mozilla, on Windows, Linux or Mac, it always takes you to mozilla.org.
Finally, I'd like to point out something that marketeers often ignore; an entity's identity may be is its brand, but the function of the entity must come before the identity. To put the brand first is to fall into all those same traps that dotcoms did in the 1990s, where it didn't matter what anyone did, so much as that they appeared to do something (even when many did nothing at all).
Branding is what you do when you haven't got a better product than the other guy, but you want people to think you do.
I agree that we should make Mozilla's icons a bit more consistent across applications and platforms, but I think the Mozilla lizard is just fine as far as logos go.
When you're going up against Microsoft and its built-in IE, you're fighting a losing game; the proper way to beat Microsoft is to play a different game than the one they want to play, because they own the field, the ball and they set the rules.
"Branding" is just another word for shining sh*t and calling it gold.
I'm flattered, but K10k is not my site (I wish it was).
My site is, in fact, right here (blatant plug) and as far as I've tested, it looks great in modern, CSS-aware browsers, and if you're not using a modern browser, the page renders as easy-to-read text. This may not be the way you wish to go with your site, but I chose this method because anyone, no matter what browser they're using, should be able to at least read the site on just about any browser.
The standards the W3C puts out--like HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0, XHTML 1.0 Transitional & Strict--are designed to degrade gracefully; that is, they may not look pixel-perfect everywhere, but they should be semantically correct.
I agree that hybrid layouts are probably the way to go for many sites; fortunately, since I run my own site, I have the authority to say that readability is more important than looking pretty. Many people working in the corporate world will not have this authority (we all know how clueless management can be), but semantic, standards-based markup, as opposed to nonsemantic, whatever-works markup cuts page code and load-time considerably and gets you better results in Google. Less money, higher placement; two things your CxO is likely to love.
After I redesigned my site using semantic markup instead of lots of tables, my site jumped from around tenth or twelfth to second in Google's results for "obnoxious". The content hadn't changed and I wasn't getting more hits, but by using the elements of XHTML and CSS to mark things up semantically, I leaped upward in Google's results. Need I say more?
The point of web standards is not--I repeat not--to make your site look the same in all browsers, but that it should be readable or usable in all browsers. A fancy-schmancy table-based layout may look good in most modern browsers, but just try viewing your wonderful page in lynx, or using a screen reader like JAWS and you'll find your fancy table-based layout has been reduced to ashes.
Using web standards, we can design sites that look good and are still usable, all the way back to the first text-based browsers. Did you know that Netscape 1.0 did not even support tables? So, if there's some schlub out there using it (and if he is, please upgrade... this is 2003, for goodness' sake), your wonderful table-based design is worth squat to him. My site, on the other hand, designed with web standards, will look fine in his copy of Netscape 1.0, so if two similar sites were designed--one with web standards and the other without--who is more likely to keep those readers who are disabled or using old or out-of-date browsers?
One final note before I get off my soapbox. If you need proof that you can do more with standards than without, look at K10k. While it does still use tables, the site uses style sheets to do most of the work and as a result, the site looks great. CSS is the way of the future, whether you're designing with or without tables. You'd better get used to it.
The chief problem with MSN is and always has been all the ads. I don't mind ads, as long as they're unintrusive. This, in my opinion, is where Google's single-mindedness made them the star. They didn't create a huge "portal", the way Yahoo, Lycos and the rest all did around 1999; rather, they simply created a search page. All it does is search.
Google's ads are also revolutionary. Simple, all-text links, all of which are clearly labelled as adverts (or, to use Google's parlance, "sponsored links"), mean less confusion. In short, Google has chosen absolute simplicity and straightforwardness over marketeering. Microsoft will want to make money off ads, so unless they follow the Google credo to the letter, people will still eschew MSN for Google. The only way to topple Google would be to make a faster, simpler, less intrusive search engine than Google, an that is one mighty tall order.
If you are a scientist, this whole story boils down to two things:
If you are employed by the government, you will, statistically speaking, be more likely to work on projects the US government is funding and promoting heavily. In the US, this means defense; unfortunately, the budgets for government-sponsored science projects on agriculture, recycling, telecommunications, health and all the rest have either been cut repeatedly over the last fifty years or privatized completely, and are now completely dwarfed by our frantic desire to "feel safe". This need to throw money at projects that make us feel safer is partially right and partially wrong, but that's another discussion.
If you aren't working for the government, you're obviously employed by private enterprise, which means that in all likelihood, you're working for Big Pharma, as the health-care industry is the largest private science-bearing industry in the nation.
This is not new news, folks. We shouldn't be surprised at this; defense has been this country's biggest industry for the last sixty years. We shouldn't even be disappointed, because massive spending on defense gave us great inventions, like Tang and the Internet. But the US government's biggest payouts in the last fifty years have all been for defense. Think Star Wars, think DARPA-Net, think V-22 Osprey (and what it would mean to build them for passenger transport as well, assuming they fix those annoying crashing problems)... the list goes on and on.
I'll bet the folks at Cerulean Studios are calling all those brokerage firms right now; Trillian does logging natively and connects to all the major networks. If you're on Windows (which I imagine a lot of these brokerages are), why use anything else?
Try Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. It'll take you all summer, but it is one of the most magnificent books I've ever read. Delany's work has been coming back into print and that's definitely a good thing. If Dhalgren seems like too much, try Nova; it's shorter and makes for a great, swashbuckling adventure.
While its a good thing (better records mean a better Net), it seems to me like ICANN is trying to blow smoke up our poopers to make us think that they actually do anything worth having them around for.
Actually, I had a really good laugh when I logged into my hotmail account (which I primarily use for online forms and such; I don't trust companies to keep my info secret) and started finding junk mail that told me it was going to help me get rid of... junk mail.
(Mr Rogers voice) Can you say "irony", kids? Sure, I knew you could.
Chairman of the FCC Mike Powell has said in interviews that he'll let companies do just about whatever they want. I think we need to start a grassroots campaign to get him ousted from his position, since he obviously cares neither about consumers nor their privacy. As far as Mr Powell is concerned, anything and everything is up for sale.
Hey, I know what we should do! When the phone usage goes up for sale, let's all chip in and buy his phone usage stats and publish them on the Web!
I hope, I think, that mobo makers wouldn't go for this scheme, since they know that Linux runs just fine on their mobos, and that building Palladium mobos would restrict their business drastically. Essentially, the whole DRM thing isn't really their problem, so why should chip and mobo makers saddle themselves with being responsible for it?
One more thing. Let's say Palladium becomes a reality. Now, remember the whole loophole-menu deal with early Apex DVD players? Imagine if that made it into the design. Microsoft would be suing the mobo maker faster than you can say "intellectual property infringement". So why should a mobo maker willingly put themselves in a position where if one rogue engineer puts a loophole in the system, they can be sued to death?
So, wait... we can pay the artists directly, thereby helping them out and piss off Hillary Rosen and the RIAA? Where do I sign up?
Ms. Rosen is probably having kittens right now. Technology brought the uncaring, monolithic companies back down to Earth, where the rest of us live; surely it can do it again.
I hate to piss on people's heads, but I have to say that I think ICANN has done a really crummy job thus far. So far all we've really seen is a whole lot of pomp and circumstance about how they're going to get things straightened out. Sadly, we no longer have John Postel with us to act as our benevolent dictator of the Internet TLDs.
The trouble is that, as the Salon article says, certain people have let it go to their heads that they are at the top of an organizational tree that covers the Internet. The Internet is by, of and especially for the people, and ICANN needs to understand that they are our servants and representatives, and not the other way round.
I know they're hard up for cash; who isn't these days? If they're hard up for cash, I would propose an anonymous "tip jar" donation scheme, where everyone from companies with money to burn (like, say, AOL Time Warner, AT&T or Microsoft) to your average Net citizen can drop a few bucks in the jar. I say "anonymous" because I think the submissions and their amounts should be kept private, so as to discourage people or companies from being able to exert pressure on ICANN that goes against the common good.
Ultimately, ICANN should, if not must, answer to the Net itself. That includes everyone from big companies all the way down to the little guy. I think we all felt really good when Karl Auerbach got elected; we felt as though we, the people of the Internet, finally had some say in how our Internet would evolve.
How ICANN can simply disregard the voices of the people is beyond me. The Net is, in many ways, a country unto itself, with its own rules and customs, and for the ICANN board to say that they want to focus on governments is an insult to us all. The US government may have commissioned the project that became the Internet, but we, the people built it into what it is today, and we continue to build it into a little better place every day.
I say that if ICANN can't manage the Internet in a way that best serves its citizens, then we the people should bloody well find someone who can.
1) Anyone remember Solaris on x86 and how poorly/slowly it ran? Exactly.
2) If Apple does this, they will be giving up on their hardware business and its higher margins. Why buy a Mac if you can put OS X on your PC?
3) They will then be competing directly with Microsoft, and we all know what happens to those people. Just ask GO Computing, Be Inc, etc etc.
4) Apple's hardware business is responsible for great innovations like USB and FireWire. We need Apple, if for no other reason than this.
I also kind of like how Apple has its own way of doing things. I think it is very healthy to have a small, fast-moving company like Apple which is CONSTANTLY innovating. If Apple went PC, they'd go out of business, and then whose ideas would Microsoft steal?
PS - I am not even a Mac user (I write this on a PC), but I think Apple is a company which needs to stick around.
Sci Fi is running a Twilight Zone Marathon, and Turner Classic Movies is running all 18 Marx Bros movies. Now I'm conflicted, and dont know which to watch!
Slashdot Mirror
We do. It's called the Freedom of Information Act.
As an unabashed and yet notoriously picky (read: pain in the ass to buy for) sci-fi fan, here are a few of my favorite books of 2003.
I just finished China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and I am flabbergasted. Mieville's city-state of New Crobuzon is utterly fantastic and his clarity of vision for his world, in my opinion, is the kind you only come across once in a great while. I will most certainly be picking up his newest novel, The Scar , as soon as I finish a couple of books curently in my queue.
I was delighted that in the last year (or perhaps a little bit more), the great Samuel R. Delany's books have begun coming back into print. Three of his novels, Dhalgren , Nova and the duplex Babel-17/Empire Star , along with his short story collection Aye, and Gomorrah... and other stories are all truly wonderful sci-fi. If you decide to read him, start with Aye, and Gomorrah..., Babel-17/Empire Star and then Nova; when you think you have a handle on him, tackle Dhalgren. Tackling Dhalgren is no easy task, but the journey is completely worth it.
Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow now has two books in print ( Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and A Place So Foregin and Eight Mor e) and a third on the way. Both books (a novel and a short story collection respectively) showcase a writer I am quite sure we'll be seeing a whole lot more of in the future. Doctorow's writing reads very much like the first writer of the next generation of sci-fi writers; you won't be disappointed.
Cyberpunk poster boy William Gibson also had a new book this year, Pattern Recognition . As his writing pressed forward, Gibson has slipped further and further from futurity into today, creating science fiction that happens in today's world. His latest work is an interesting story of Cayce Pollard, a cool-hunter with a severe allergy to brands. The story is, as with all things Gibson, tightly written and as focused as a laser beam on its subject. A great read for all.
I sure hope this helps. I know not all the books came out specifically in 2003, but I read them all in 2003 (along with countless others) and I think that's close enough for me to sneak them in.
Of course they will, but Linux users can always say, "Hey, Microsoft knows they have an inferior product, so they came to us for help." As much as /. people hate Windows, this is, I think, a good thing.
First, by asking Linux users what they can do to improve Windows, it is a de facto admission that Windows is an inferior product. Second, maybe we could get some good things out of it, like fully-documented APIs and more-open protocols from Microsoft.
However, don't expect Microsoft to release jack under the GPL. Put it out of your mind, because it'll never happen. And don't expect that Linux users are going to go easy on Microsoft. We have put them in our sights and will take them down, not through legal wrangling, but because the open-source community will out-build them.
The article was well-written and, I felt, fairly objective. My thanks to Mr. Bourke for keeping a level head when many are screaming bloody blue murder. For those who just want the meat, here it is:
These factors precluded the reviewer from really thinking of a single situation in which he could recommend UnixWare 7.1.3 as an installable option.
So that's it, folks; we now have more than a single complaint. We know what SCO is after: they want all *nixes nixed, so they can claim the market as theirs and theirs alone. But the *nixes are not successful because there's only one; they are successful because there are computers all over the world running a variety of Unix and Unix-like platforms.
Bad idea revealing that they are looking into the BSDs, though. Two reasons: first, the BSD case was already tried and closed. Second, the statements can likely be used to prove that SCO is unwilling to play nice.
Most Unixes out there are perfectly legally licensed versions. If SCO goes after IBM, Linux and BSD, it's a safe bet that Sun, HP and all the other Unix vendors are next, and they're probably calling their lawyers right now, telling them to sharpen their knives.
The fact that SCO wants to go after the BSDs goes to show that they don't understand how the *nix world works. My reading on this (and I'm not a lawyer) is that SCO wants to be like Microsoft; one OS, distributed by one company, binary-only, and DMCA'd up the wazoo.
Wow, talk about bad moves! If there's one thing a small company with a limited bankroll like SCO should not be doing, it's trying to push around a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that has buttloads of cash with which to fight.
Wait, does this mean we have to side with the studios now?
You're mistaking the big difference; The penguin may have evolved into a sort of brand, but not because it was forced down people's throats.
The Linux penguin was not a branded effort to make all Linux distros look the same, because Linus did not say, "Okay, everyone, I want you to use the penguin in your logos and ad copy so everyone knows 'Linux = penguins'." Rather, he adopted the penguin as a mascot purely because it amused him, and everyone picked up and ran with it. The Linux penguin is, in a sense, only a brand in that people voluntarily use the penguin; it is the un-brand. In some cases, distro makers have actually eschewed using the penguin (Red Hat, who has a true branding effort, leaps immediately to mind; when was the last time you saw Tux on a default Red Hat screen?)
And we are all wearing the same jerseys when we use a Mozilla product, because when you click the throbber in Firebird or Mozilla, on Windows, Linux or Mac, it always takes you to mozilla.org.
Finally, I'd like to point out something that marketeers often ignore; an entity's identity may be is its brand, but the function of the entity must come before the identity. To put the brand first is to fall into all those same traps that dotcoms did in the 1990s, where it didn't matter what anyone did, so much as that they appeared to do something (even when many did nothing at all).
Branding is what you do when you haven't got a better product than the other guy, but you want people to think you do.
I agree that we should make Mozilla's icons a bit more consistent across applications and platforms, but I think the Mozilla lizard is just fine as far as logos go.
When you're going up against Microsoft and its built-in IE, you're fighting a losing game; the proper way to beat Microsoft is to play a different game than the one they want to play, because they own the field, the ball and they set the rules.
"Branding" is just another word for shining sh*t and calling it gold.
I'm flattered, but K10k is not my site (I wish it was).
My site is, in fact, right here (blatant plug) and as far as I've tested, it looks great in modern, CSS-aware browsers, and if you're not using a modern browser, the page renders as easy-to-read text. This may not be the way you wish to go with your site, but I chose this method because anyone, no matter what browser they're using, should be able to at least read the site on just about any browser.
The standards the W3C puts out--like HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0, XHTML 1.0 Transitional & Strict--are designed to degrade gracefully; that is, they may not look pixel-perfect everywhere, but they should be semantically correct.
I agree that hybrid layouts are probably the way to go for many sites; fortunately, since I run my own site, I have the authority to say that readability is more important than looking pretty. Many people working in the corporate world will not have this authority (we all know how clueless management can be), but semantic, standards-based markup, as opposed to nonsemantic, whatever-works markup cuts page code and load-time considerably and gets you better results in Google. Less money, higher placement; two things your CxO is likely to love.
After I redesigned my site using semantic markup instead of lots of tables, my site jumped from around tenth or twelfth to second in Google's results for "obnoxious". The content hadn't changed and I wasn't getting more hits, but by using the elements of XHTML and CSS to mark things up semantically, I leaped upward in Google's results. Need I say more?
The point of web standards is not--I repeat not--to make your site look the same in all browsers, but that it should be readable or usable in all browsers. A fancy-schmancy table-based layout may look good in most modern browsers, but just try viewing your wonderful page in lynx, or using a screen reader like JAWS and you'll find your fancy table-based layout has been reduced to ashes.
Using web standards, we can design sites that look good and are still usable, all the way back to the first text-based browsers. Did you know that Netscape 1.0 did not even support tables? So, if there's some schlub out there using it (and if he is, please upgrade... this is 2003, for goodness' sake), your wonderful table-based design is worth squat to him. My site, on the other hand, designed with web standards, will look fine in his copy of Netscape 1.0, so if two similar sites were designed--one with web standards and the other without--who is more likely to keep those readers who are disabled or using old or out-of-date browsers?
One final note before I get off my soapbox. If you need proof that you can do more with standards than without, look at K10k. While it does still use tables, the site uses style sheets to do most of the work and as a result, the site looks great. CSS is the way of the future, whether you're designing with or without tables. You'd better get used to it.
The chief problem with MSN is and always has been all the ads. I don't mind ads, as long as they're unintrusive. This, in my opinion, is where Google's single-mindedness made them the star. They didn't create a huge "portal", the way Yahoo, Lycos and the rest all did around 1999; rather, they simply created a search page. All it does is search.
Google's ads are also revolutionary. Simple, all-text links, all of which are clearly labelled as adverts (or, to use Google's parlance, "sponsored links"), mean less confusion. In short, Google has chosen absolute simplicity and straightforwardness over marketeering. Microsoft will want to make money off ads, so unless they follow the Google credo to the letter, people will still eschew MSN for Google. The only way to topple Google would be to make a faster, simpler, less intrusive search engine than Google, an that is one mighty tall order.
If you are a scientist, this whole story boils down to two things:
This is not new news, folks. We shouldn't be surprised at this; defense has been this country's biggest industry for the last sixty years. We shouldn't even be disappointed, because massive spending on defense gave us great inventions, like Tang and the Internet. But the US government's biggest payouts in the last fifty years have all been for defense. Think Star Wars, think DARPA-Net, think V-22 Osprey (and what it would mean to build them for passenger transport as well, assuming they fix those annoying crashing problems)... the list goes on and on.
If no one in the US is using IPv6, maybe the file-swappers should just switch over to it. Then maybe the RIAA will think everyone stopped!
I'll bet the folks at Cerulean Studios are calling all those brokerage firms right now; Trillian does logging natively and connects to all the major networks. If you're on Windows (which I imagine a lot of these brokerages are), why use anything else?
Try Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren . It'll take you all summer, but it is one of the most magnificent books I've ever read. Delany's work has been coming back into print and that's definitely a good thing. If Dhalgren seems like too much, try Nova ; it's shorter and makes for a great, swashbuckling adventure.
ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est.
While its a good thing (better records mean a better Net), it seems to me like ICANN is trying to blow smoke up our poopers to make us think that they actually do anything worth having them around for.
(Mr Rogers voice) Can you say "irony", kids? Sure, I knew you could.
Hey, I know what we should do! When the phone usage goes up for sale, let's all chip in and buy his phone usage stats and publish them on the Web!
One more thing. Let's say Palladium becomes a reality. Now, remember the whole loophole-menu deal with early Apex DVD players? Imagine if that made it into the design. Microsoft would be suing the mobo maker faster than you can say "intellectual property infringement". So why should a mobo maker willingly put themselves in a position where if one rogue engineer puts a loophole in the system, they can be sued to death?
Ms. Rosen is probably having kittens right now. Technology brought the uncaring, monolithic companies back down to Earth, where the rest of us live; surely it can do it again.
Back in 'ninety-nine
Napster was ev'ryone's god
Now it is kaput
The trouble is that, as the Salon article says, certain people have let it go to their heads that they are at the top of an organizational tree that covers the Internet. The Internet is by, of and especially for the people, and ICANN needs to understand that they are our servants and representatives, and not the other way round.
I know they're hard up for cash; who isn't these days? If they're hard up for cash, I would propose an anonymous "tip jar" donation scheme, where everyone from companies with money to burn (like, say, AOL Time Warner, AT&T or Microsoft) to your average Net citizen can drop a few bucks in the jar. I say "anonymous" because I think the submissions and their amounts should be kept private, so as to discourage people or companies from being able to exert pressure on ICANN that goes against the common good.
Ultimately, ICANN should, if not must, answer to the Net itself. That includes everyone from big companies all the way down to the little guy. I think we all felt really good when Karl Auerbach got elected; we felt as though we, the people of the Internet, finally had some say in how our Internet would evolve.
How ICANN can simply disregard the voices of the people is beyond me. The Net is, in many ways, a country unto itself, with its own rules and customs, and for the ICANN board to say that they want to focus on governments is an insult to us all. The US government may have commissioned the project that became the Internet, but we, the people built it into what it is today, and we continue to build it into a little better place every day.
I say that if ICANN can't manage the Internet in a way that best serves its citizens, then we the people should bloody well find someone who can.
1) Anyone remember Solaris on x86 and how poorly/slowly it ran? Exactly.
2) If Apple does this, they will be giving up on their hardware business and its higher margins. Why buy a Mac if you can put OS X on your PC?
3) They will then be competing directly with Microsoft, and we all know what happens to those people. Just ask GO Computing, Be Inc, etc etc.
4) Apple's hardware business is responsible for great innovations like USB and FireWire. We need Apple, if for no other reason than this.
I also kind of like how Apple has its own way of doing things. I think it is very healthy to have a small, fast-moving company like Apple which is CONSTANTLY innovating. If Apple went PC, they'd go out of business, and then whose ideas would Microsoft steal?
PS - I am not even a Mac user (I write this on a PC), but I think Apple is a company which needs to stick around.
Sci Fi is running a Twilight Zone Marathon, and Turner Classic Movies is running all 18 Marx Bros movies. Now I'm conflicted, and dont know which to watch!