As much as I hate to defend bad tech support, I can kind of understand why major PC vendors are still pretty reluctant to touch Linux support. Realistically, the market share for desktop users of Linux still isn't high enough for them to be able to justify (to their financial dept., anyway) hiring a bunch of new support staff, or retraining the ones they already have. That kind of human resources move could cost a large company like HP tens or hundreds of millions over the first year or two.
It's not that they won't allow you to run Linux, it's that they don't support it. I would guess that your warranty/support agreement states something to that effect -- if it doesn't, then that's the issue I would bring directly to them.
Obviously, most of the big hardware suppliers are having a hard time adjusting to the openness of Linux -- they've been dealing directly and exclusively with Microsoft for so long, the though that they would even be allowed to distribute the specs to their speciialized tools is probably still fairly foreign to them.
--- begin karma whoring ---
I suppose that it's also possible that Microsoft could have a "non-support" clause buried somewhere in its contracts with big PC manufacturers, barring them from providing support for other operating systems.
The original issue arose because the article's author had seen security advisories about the versions included in the 2.2 release, and simply hadn't realized that the fixes for those problems had been backported. While it may show a poor understanding of the Debian distribution, it does not reflect poor administration practices.
The international community may not care about specific US Federal Circuit judges' rulings, but the WTO-member nations stick together on IP issues. That's why the WTO exists: to insure a more consistent legal and economic environment for corporations that want to do business outside their home country. If the US gov't makes a strong precedent towards sticking it to potentially "subversive" software, whether it be open source or not, look for the big European and Asian producers to follow suit.
Now is when I really want to see some of the ol' cyberpunk magic...c'mon, Chinese government, post everything American and copyrighted...now!
Are you suggesting that organic life didn't begin with a few "preprogrammed parts?" Simple protein strands weren't created by living organisms, but were necessary to their existence. Hell, go an order of magnitude further down in scale, and you have the basic chemical elements -- there are "parts" that any complex system breaks down to.
Remember fractals? How 'bout "chaos theory?" Basically, they both relate to what is now called complexity theory, which is basically showing some striking similarities in the organization of complex systems at all levels. It doesn't matter if you look at the blood molecules in the bird's wing, the air vortices it creates around it as it flies, or the storm clouds that are seeded into existence as it passes -- you see organizational structures in common between all three.
Similarly, while electronic simulation of a primative form of evolution may not give us sentient computers or full-blown artifical life, it certainly can serve as an aid to harnessing some portion of that cycle of change and trial that has created such innovative natural structures in our world. Plus, it just migh illustrate factors in natural evolution that we would have overlooked otherwise.
How many wheeled animals have you seen? Remember, evolution in meatspace has been going on for several billion years, and has had a much larger and richer set of variables to cycle through. Show me a simulation complex enough to evolve sentient occupants, and I bet you'll have your wheels before long.
What, you meant implement some basic sort of sane security policies to prevent a single user's mistakes from fsck'ing the whole system? Or even design an OS with networking and multiuser access in mind? (Wow, that sure would be awfully tough...fifteen years ago, before it had been done almost every one of the flavors of UNIX.)
Or maybe you mean a more advanced architecture -- one that could apply different security models to code depending on whether it was being executed from a local or remote source, and which put potentially "suspect" applications into a limited sandbox? (Why, that sounds an awful lot like Java, circa the mid-90s...)
Basically, Microsoft, however good they are at UI design, code reuse, or marketing, often drops the ball when it comes to security. They push the envelope of functionality far before they're ready to deal with the vulnerabilities that it can cause. That wouldn't even bother me so much if they didn't try to pass their tools off as "secure by default," and keep problems and risks under wraps until they can be silently patched in the next service pack.
Microsoft, like any software design group, has the right to make a design choice favoring code reusability over security. In my opinion, though, they've screwed up here by not making clear to their users the potential implications of a choice made when designing the application. The "user friendly" interface and widespread distribution of Microsoft productivity applications contributes to their appearance of being "safe", while the flexibility of the components makes them very powerful.
The average user of MS Office knows their way around the interface, and may even be able to throw together a few quick-and-dirty macros, but they are by no means an experienced object-oriented programmer, or a distributed systems designer. They will not expect to have to check every Word processing document they receive for potential security risks; nor will they automatically run any filtering or TCP/IP monitoring software. Hence, there will continue to be millions of computers comprimised to attackers on a regular basis.
I have little symphathy for system administrators who fail to take basic precautions like changing default passwords or disabling unneeded services -- that's their job, and they should know better. However, I don't expect the same level of dilligence from an inexperienced user who's trying to type view a business letter sent to them from outside the office. Microsoft distributes even their "basic" productivity applications with all the functionality of a basic operating system, makes that power easy to harness (for whatever purpose), and demonstrates little more to their average user than how easy it makes dragging and dropping a spreadsheet chart into a business report. That's irresposible and misleading.
...and have no problems emulating the high-end custom graphics hardware, or the multi-core processor...on standard Mac hardware...oh, I guess that would cause some problems, woudn't it?
Remember, personal computers are designed to do many things fairly well. Game consoles very few things, but do them very, very well. The console makers also sell them as loss leaders, and make back their money on officially licenses games -- which means that much of the hardware they include would cost much more than the unit retails for, if you could get it all for a standard computer.
They might decipher English...or they might start with one of the many, many other languages that contributions have alreday been added in. The project started in France, has support from many European agencies, and has already received messages from >120 countries.
Not everthing begins and ends in the US, and not everything is written or spoken in English -- Yes, that's true, technology exists outside the Ameri-bubble!
Apparently, the satellite will contain specially designed glass discs that have been tested to withstand 50,000 years worth of cosmic rays. This article states that they will be DVDs, though the official KEO FAQ says that CD-ROMs will be used.
Apparently, there's also going to be a 'library' of world history and current events, portraits of a diverse group of people, an astronomical clock showing when it was launched, and an artificial diamond containing samples of seawater, human blood, air, and soil.
Can anyone else tell that the initiator of the project is an artist, not an engineer?
Many companies and individuals today hide their greed behind the good name of capitalism, just as many dictators hid behind the name of Communism. Unfortunately, I let myself fall into the incorrect usage of the term as well, and must apologize for letting my emotions run away with my typing.
I'm sick and tired of hearing current economic analysts, like the boys over at the Cato Institute, go on and on about the "New Economy." If there is indeed an economic revolution going on, then they should stop shooting in the dark and pay attention for a bit before they start acting like they know what's going on. The current body of economic theory, which they rely on to make their arguments, was developed over a long span of timethrough analysis of the "Old Economy." If those rules no longer apply, then they have no more authority than I do. On the other hand, if there is no "New Economy," then they are simply lying through their teeth in the hopes of being the next one to be interviewed in Forbes.
You're also mixing your metaphors here. The "New Economy" is supposedly the fruit of the adoption of information technology, and includes such wonders as B2B portal sites and cheap software duplication. Your comments about the potential expansion of digital tech to the rest of the world are based on an the idea of "market globalization", which may rely upon information technology, but preceeded and is independent of it.
Globalization of business is not the "hands across the world" event that some people seem to think it is. The track record of most major corporations doing business in developing nations shows that rather well. Right now, the wealth of America and much of the rest of the developed world is drawn more from the efforts of workers in sweat shops than from any local or natural resources. The US has more valuable natural resources than any other nation in the world, yet we import countless more goods every year than we export.
The current international economy would collapse overnight if those underdeveloped areas suddenly were modernized; who, exactly, would make all of those cheap imported goods that the West realies upon to make consumerism affordable? Where would they go to contruct highly polluting factories, and hire workers for pennies a day to crank out cheap bits of plastic, metal, and silicon? Who would they exploit horribly to keep their profit margins high?
The other 95% of the world in not very likely to adopt computer technology in the next five, or even ten to twenty, years. If a region has no industrial base whatsoever, then shipping them a carton of computers is worthless; they need electric power, communications and transport infrastructure, and basic supplies like clean water, stable shelter, and antibiotics before the Internet is going to do them any good. Once they had those, they might think twice about working for the same rediculously low wages, or allowing the same amount of natural destruction and manipulation of their economy that multinationals had brought to town.
You almost got it right, but descended into sarcasm and lost it at the last minute. "Socially responsible" products can be made anywhere, but should be sold for a price that is just enough to pay for parts, shipping, and a basic living wage for their maker. That's it. No added markup just because the person on the other end wants it badly enough, or the exchange rate favors the seller; no profit, just return on investment and time at the rate necessary to survive.
Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, most every product they sell would be much, much cheaper. It would more than make up for the lack of six-figure salaries out there, and might even start to ease up the exploitation of the developing world by those nations that became industrial powerhouses long ago.
It's funny to me that hardcore capitalists, who complain so often about others feeling entitled to welfare, unemployment, medicare, etc., bitch and moan when they don't feel they're getting the opportunity to turn a profit that they feel "entitled" to. Yes, of course you're better than everyone else because you drive a Beamer -- you've earned it, and everything else that you get because you live in a society that rewards greed more than compassion, and measures personal worth by personal wealth.
The problem with simply "[eliminating] special treatment across the board" is that it would be too little, too late. Whatever the reasons for it, be they government meddling, corporate manipulation, or even just consumer stupidity, large corporations, in aggregate, control most of the world's wealth and global influence. Were the fetters removed from their power now, they would simply entrench themselves further, and the free market would fall by the wayside, thereby invalidating the "invisible hand" economic theory.
The playing field would have to be leveled first, then let loose, if there was to be any chance of a true open market and all its potential benefits. Personally, I don't think that would be such a bad idea, but I don't see much popular support for the idea of simply pulling the big corporations apart and starting over.
The analysts at the Cato Institute are quite obviously very intelligent, and there is no question of the deliberate and careful fashion in which they contruct their arguments. However, I would argue that the conclusions these "pundits" draw from their data are seriously flawed, and reflect a more specific bias than Libertarianism. They very carefully and knowingly "interpret" their data and conclusions to advance a social agenda, which just so happens to support a large number of policies that would transfer an even larger share of wealth and power to big businesses.
Personally, I have no problem with the existence and operation of large corporations. As you suggest, many of the fine technological products I utilize on a daily basis are the result of corporate developments. I do not simply "bash" corporations; rather, I argue against the policies and would-be politicos that try to hand them control of the world's governments on a silver platter.
(Let me preface this by saying I am an operating system design enthusiast, not expert; please let me know if I've glossed over or just plain stated incorrectly important elements of the Mach/BSD interaction in OS-X.)
Both of you are, in a sense, correct; OS-X/Darwin will look very much like a standard BSD system to the userland application/programmer, but the low-level architecture is different, due to the Mach microkernel. Unlike a the Linux kernel, Mach doesn't include its device drivers in kernel memory space. Instead, they're run as processes, which can be started, killed, and swapped while the system is running.
It carries a performance penalty, obviously, since the kernel has to communicate with more processes to accomplish even basic I/O. However, it also gives the entire OS an added level of flexibility and (potential) stability, since well-written drivers won't take the system down even if their code crashes and dumps.
The 'BSD' side of OS-X's personality comes from the choice of that platform to fill out the needed higher-level services to make the system complete. Once you're up to finished applications, there should be only minor differences between OS-X and any of the other main BSD derivatives.
I think there's a reason that Apple funded MkLinux for several years, then dropped it: they wanted the experience with a Mach microkernel-based, *NIX OS on the PowerPC platform. They got it, and now have been able to roll that into Darwin. Hence, the decent core OS performance and stability.
Those options that Jobs likes to keep open are ones that could keep Apple going in the face of a complete collapse of their hardware business. Look at the server platform that Apple is slowly but surely building up around OS X: You've got the open source Darwin core OS, the Darwin Streaming Server for media content (also open source), Web Objects for app servers, and a custom JRE that provides access to the complete OpenStep API (NetInfo, GUI elements, etc.).
I know a lot of companies that would be happy to have their core products be even a portion of Apple's "spares"...
The Carbon API is basically an emulation layer for "old world" Mac OS applications (i.e., OS 7/8/9). It would require a much more extensive development effort to support under Linux, and has nothing to do with OpenStep outside of Apple's integration of it into OS X.
OS X is actually looking like one of the more "platform-friendly" systems hitting the market these days. Its BSD roots should give it access to both the full arsenal of BSD-native code, and to some sort of Linux "port" system. The Carbon API gives it compatibility with traditional Macintosh applications, and Cocoa has the full OpenStep spec. Finally, the Java layer supports both the full Java 2 runtime environment, and a set of Java wrappers for the Objective-C OpenStep API and libraries.
OS X uses PDF (Portable Document Format) for its entire graphics subsystem. It's basically a simplified PostScript-derivative, but still offers many of the same benefits in term of screen-to-print consistency, graphics portability, etc. The file format has been open for a while, and there are open source libraries for read/write and display.
PDF files (better known as Adobe Acrobat documents) are already used online extensively, but present some problems for use as an HTML replacement. One, they're not designed to be loaded incrementally, so while small documents would download fairly quickly, larger ones would drag on and on for a long time. Two, their support for linking, bookmarking, etc. is basically just a hack Adobe added in later version.
Those guys scare me. A lot. Their analyses are just high-brow enough to make a lot of people take them as gospel, but there are logical holes a mile wide in many of them. I've heard many intelligent people argue in support of libertarianism, but seldom from this so-called "think tank". Look at the "evidence" cited in the article: Amazon only lists a little over 8,300 total productivity applications, for all platforms, so there must be way fewer total applications on Windows than that. Yeah, and since the local Circuit City has fewer than fifty models of computer to choose from, there must be no more than 40-45 total types of Windows-compatible machines in existence.
The Cato Institute's analysts parrot the agenda of corporate America, trying to influence policy and legislation to benefit the wealthiest groups and individuals in the country. How they came to be considered authorities on anything and everything economic is beyond me.
Public Relations Harass early homebrew computer hackers, berating them for being thieves and plagarists because they've copied and improved on your software. Once established and secure in your market position, continue to aggressively pursue any and all perceived insults to your bottom line, including, but not limited to, open source, resale of used software, returns of bundled software, failure of users to upgrade, et. al.
Contract Negotiation Sign a fat contract with IBM for the OS for their new 'PC', then go out and buy it finished off of some poor sap for 5% of what IBM is paying you. Continue to ride your "technological advantage" through several generations of operating system, using your OS as a lock-in tool first for your office and productivity software, then for your bloated, unstable server applications.
Strategic positioning Manipulate and abandon any and all allies until large enough to begin destroying them outright. Stifle the market by attempting to subvert any technology you do not own -- especially the most dangerous tech of them all, the open standards-based, widespread adoption of the Internet. Offer the "Prozac-Net," better known as MSN, as a kinder, safer, Microsoft-approved alternative. Form partnership with several large media companies to insure someone will always take your side.
---begin rant---
Basically, it reads like a textbook example of modern business practices. This is why I can't stand unrestrained capitalism, and the techno-libertarians who continue to think that the free market will save the world from itself. The free market doesn't work, because no one play by the rules once they are on top. Take away government power over businesses, and you have Gates, Ellison, and Warner ruling the Western world.
...the stabalizing factor is Slashdot,...and countless other professional or topical weblogs, discussion boards, MU*s, etc. (Sorry, but the home-team-ego-trip thing bugs me after a while.)
I think, though, that we've already begun to see some of the same "suburban exodus" you speak of, though, in the form of AOL, MSN, et. al. -- they're a kinder, gentler, easier-to-use Internet, without all the headaches of the real thing. My grandparents, family friends, etc., won't even think about using a "real" ISP, and are more than willing to take the hit in performance, cost, and availability of information that the mega-services require.
So, dear/.'ers, a question: Do we want to keep the Net together, (impose growth boundaries, etc.) or should we allow those who lean that way to leave for the "'burbs," and deal with the leaner, meaner Net they leave behind?
...and have to constantly 'carry' your license while operating a computer on the net? Hmm...
That begs the question (though it has also come up in other discussion of network theory and design): Where do we draw the line between reliability and performance of a network, and the privacy of its users?
In a completely anonymous system, no one can be tracked down to persecute them, whether they are a harmless/.'er or an international terrorist or script kiddie. On the other hand, a network with a unique ID for every device and individual lets spammers and kiddie porn peddlers get blocked, but also gives the gov't, or anti-abortion activists, or your carzy ex, find out who and where you are.
So, what do we do? Continue with the awkward practice of a partially anonymous network and optional, somewhat reliable authentication? Or do we move further towards one of the other ends of the spectrum?
What we really need is some equivalent to mass transit -- cheap, fairly reliable, and fixed in its routes. I'm thinking along the lines of the services that AOL, CompuServe, and the like: a subset of the Internet's full content, bundled together and distributed to the (probably large) fraction of Internet users who would seldom go anywhere but those major sites. Individuals can pick and choose from that selection, but must use another service to get access to sites that aren't included.
We may actually start to see this happen as mobile net access becomes more common. Since there's a definate limit to what kinds of information will be useful (or usable) to someone working on a 300 pixes square screen and small keypad, moving the sites that those people are most likely to use onto a seperate, but linked, "cache" network (think Akamai on a different protocol or port) could help ease the burden on the rest of the network.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not that they won't allow you to run Linux, it's that they don't support it. I would guess that your warranty/support agreement states something to that effect -- if it doesn't, then that's the issue I would bring directly to them.
Obviously, most of the big hardware suppliers are having a hard time adjusting to the openness of Linux -- they've been dealing directly and exclusively with Microsoft for so long, the though that they would even be allowed to distribute the specs to their speciialized tools is probably still fairly foreign to them.
--- begin karma whoring ---
I suppose that it's also possible that Microsoft could have a "non-support" clause buried somewhere in its contracts with big PC manufacturers, barring them from providing support for other operating systems.
--- end karma whoring ---
The original issue arose because the article's author had seen security advisories about the versions included in the 2.2 release, and simply hadn't realized that the fixes for those problems had been backported. While it may show a poor understanding of the Debian distribution, it does not reflect poor administration practices.
Now is when I really want to see some of the ol' cyberpunk magic...c'mon, Chinese government, post everything American and copyrighted...now!
Remember fractals? How 'bout "chaos theory?" Basically, they both relate to what is now called complexity theory, which is basically showing some striking similarities in the organization of complex systems at all levels. It doesn't matter if you look at the blood molecules in the bird's wing, the air vortices it creates around it as it flies, or the storm clouds that are seeded into existence as it passes -- you see organizational structures in common between all three.
Similarly, while electronic simulation of a primative form of evolution may not give us sentient computers or full-blown artifical life, it certainly can serve as an aid to harnessing some portion of that cycle of change and trial that has created such innovative natural structures in our world. Plus, it just migh illustrate factors in natural evolution that we would have overlooked otherwise.
How many wheeled animals have you seen? Remember, evolution in meatspace has been going on for several billion years, and has had a much larger and richer set of variables to cycle through. Show me a simulation complex enough to evolve sentient occupants, and I bet you'll have your wheels before long.
Or maybe you mean a more advanced architecture -- one that could apply different security models to code depending on whether it was being executed from a local or remote source, and which put potentially "suspect" applications into a limited sandbox? (Why, that sounds an awful lot like Java, circa the mid-90s...)
Basically, Microsoft, however good they are at UI design, code reuse, or marketing, often drops the ball when it comes to security. They push the envelope of functionality far before they're ready to deal with the vulnerabilities that it can cause. That wouldn't even bother me so much if they didn't try to pass their tools off as "secure by default," and keep problems and risks under wraps until they can be silently patched in the next service pack.
The average user of MS Office knows their way around the interface, and may even be able to throw together a few quick-and-dirty macros, but they are by no means an experienced object-oriented programmer, or a distributed systems designer. They will not expect to have to check every Word processing document they receive for potential security risks; nor will they automatically run any filtering or TCP/IP monitoring software. Hence, there will continue to be millions of computers comprimised to attackers on a regular basis.
I have little symphathy for system administrators who fail to take basic precautions like changing default passwords or disabling unneeded services -- that's their job, and they should know better. However, I don't expect the same level of dilligence from an inexperienced user who's trying to type view a business letter sent to them from outside the office. Microsoft distributes even their "basic" productivity applications with all the functionality of a basic operating system, makes that power easy to harness (for whatever purpose), and demonstrates little more to their average user than how easy it makes dragging and dropping a spreadsheet chart into a business report. That's irresposible and misleading.
Remember, personal computers are designed to do many things fairly well. Game consoles very few things, but do them very, very well. The console makers also sell them as loss leaders, and make back their money on officially licenses games -- which means that much of the hardware they include would cost much more than the unit retails for, if you could get it all for a standard computer.
Not everthing begins and ends in the US, and not everything is written or spoken in English -- Yes, that's true, technology exists outside the Ameri-bubble!
Apparently, there's also going to be a 'library' of world history and current events, portraits of a diverse group of people, an astronomical clock showing when it was launched, and an artificial diamond containing samples of seawater, human blood, air, and soil.
Can anyone else tell that the initiator of the project is an artist, not an engineer?
Many companies and individuals today hide their greed behind the good name of capitalism, just as many dictators hid behind the name of Communism. Unfortunately, I let myself fall into the incorrect usage of the term as well, and must apologize for letting my emotions run away with my typing.
You're also mixing your metaphors here. The "New Economy" is supposedly the fruit of the adoption of information technology, and includes such wonders as B2B portal sites and cheap software duplication. Your comments about the potential expansion of digital tech to the rest of the world are based on an the idea of "market globalization", which may rely upon information technology, but preceeded and is independent of it.
Globalization of business is not the "hands across the world" event that some people seem to think it is. The track record of most major corporations doing business in developing nations shows that rather well. Right now, the wealth of America and much of the rest of the developed world is drawn more from the efforts of workers in sweat shops than from any local or natural resources. The US has more valuable natural resources than any other nation in the world, yet we import countless more goods every year than we export.
The current international economy would collapse overnight if those underdeveloped areas suddenly were modernized; who, exactly, would make all of those cheap imported goods that the West realies upon to make consumerism affordable? Where would they go to contruct highly polluting factories, and hire workers for pennies a day to crank out cheap bits of plastic, metal, and silicon? Who would they exploit horribly to keep their profit margins high?
The other 95% of the world in not very likely to adopt computer technology in the next five, or even ten to twenty, years. If a region has no industrial base whatsoever, then shipping them a carton of computers is worthless; they need electric power, communications and transport infrastructure, and basic supplies like clean water, stable shelter, and antibiotics before the Internet is going to do them any good. Once they had those, they might think twice about working for the same rediculously low wages, or allowing the same amount of natural destruction and manipulation of their economy that multinationals had brought to town.
Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, most every product they sell would be much, much cheaper. It would more than make up for the lack of six-figure salaries out there, and might even start to ease up the exploitation of the developing world by those nations that became industrial powerhouses long ago.
It's funny to me that hardcore capitalists, who complain so often about others feeling entitled to welfare, unemployment, medicare, etc., bitch and moan when they don't feel they're getting the opportunity to turn a profit that they feel "entitled" to. Yes, of course you're better than everyone else because you drive a Beamer -- you've earned it, and everything else that you get because you live in a society that rewards greed more than compassion, and measures personal worth by personal wealth.
The playing field would have to be leveled first, then let loose, if there was to be any chance of a true open market and all its potential benefits. Personally, I don't think that would be such a bad idea, but I don't see much popular support for the idea of simply pulling the big corporations apart and starting over.
Personally, I have no problem with the existence and operation of large corporations. As you suggest, many of the fine technological products I utilize on a daily basis are the result of corporate developments. I do not simply "bash" corporations; rather, I argue against the policies and would-be politicos that try to hand them control of the world's governments on a silver platter.
Both of you are, in a sense, correct; OS-X/Darwin will look very much like a standard BSD system to the userland application/programmer, but the low-level architecture is different, due to the Mach microkernel. Unlike a the Linux kernel, Mach doesn't include its device drivers in kernel memory space. Instead, they're run as processes, which can be started, killed, and swapped while the system is running.
It carries a performance penalty, obviously, since the kernel has to communicate with more processes to accomplish even basic I/O. However, it also gives the entire OS an added level of flexibility and (potential) stability, since well-written drivers won't take the system down even if their code crashes and dumps.
The 'BSD' side of OS-X's personality comes from the choice of that platform to fill out the needed higher-level services to make the system complete. Once you're up to finished applications, there should be only minor differences between OS-X and any of the other main BSD derivatives.
I think there's a reason that Apple funded MkLinux for several years, then dropped it: they wanted the experience with a Mach microkernel-based, *NIX OS on the PowerPC platform. They got it, and now have been able to roll that into Darwin. Hence, the decent core OS performance and stability.
I know a lot of companies that would be happy to have their core products be even a portion of Apple's "spares"...
OS X is actually looking like one of the more "platform-friendly" systems hitting the market these days. Its BSD roots should give it access to both the full arsenal of BSD-native code, and to some sort of Linux "port" system. The Carbon API gives it compatibility with traditional Macintosh applications, and Cocoa has the full OpenStep spec. Finally, the Java layer supports both the full Java 2 runtime environment, and a set of Java wrappers for the Objective-C OpenStep API and libraries.
PDF files (better known as Adobe Acrobat documents) are already used online extensively, but present some problems for use as an HTML replacement. One, they're not designed to be loaded incrementally, so while small documents would download fairly quickly, larger ones would drag on and on for a long time. Two, their support for linking, bookmarking, etc. is basically just a hack Adobe added in later version.
The Cato Institute's analysts parrot the agenda of corporate America, trying to influence policy and legislation to benefit the wealthiest groups and individuals in the country. How they came to be considered authorities on anything and everything economic is beyond me.
- Public Relations
- Contract Negotiation
- Strategic positioning
---begin rant---Harass early homebrew computer hackers, berating them for being thieves and plagarists because they've copied and improved on your software. Once established and secure in your market position, continue to aggressively pursue any and all perceived insults to your bottom line, including, but not limited to, open source, resale of used software, returns of bundled software, failure of users to upgrade, et. al.
Sign a fat contract with IBM for the OS for their new 'PC', then go out and buy it finished off of some poor sap for 5% of what IBM is paying you. Continue to ride your "technological advantage" through several generations of operating system, using your OS as a lock-in tool first for your office and productivity software, then for your bloated, unstable server applications.
Manipulate and abandon any and all allies until large enough to begin destroying them outright. Stifle the market by attempting to subvert any technology you do not own -- especially the most dangerous tech of them all, the open standards-based, widespread adoption of the Internet. Offer the "Prozac-Net," better known as MSN, as a kinder, safer, Microsoft-approved alternative. Form partnership with several large media companies to insure someone will always take your side.
Basically, it reads like a textbook example of modern business practices. This is why I can't stand unrestrained capitalism, and the techno-libertarians who continue to think that the free market will save the world from itself. The free market doesn't work, because no one play by the rules once they are on top. Take away government power over businesses, and you have Gates, Ellison, and Warner ruling the Western world.
---end rant---
I think, though, that we've already begun to see some of the same "suburban exodus" you speak of, though, in the form of AOL, MSN, et. al. -- they're a kinder, gentler, easier-to-use Internet, without all the headaches of the real thing. My grandparents, family friends, etc., won't even think about using a "real" ISP, and are more than willing to take the hit in performance, cost, and availability of information that the mega-services require.
So, dear /.'ers, a question: Do we want to keep the Net together, (impose growth boundaries, etc.) or should we allow those who lean that way to leave for the "'burbs," and deal with the leaner, meaner Net they leave behind?
That begs the question (though it has also come up in other discussion of network theory and design): Where do we draw the line between reliability and performance of a network, and the privacy of its users?
In a completely anonymous system, no one can be tracked down to persecute them, whether they are a harmless /.'er or an international terrorist or script kiddie. On the other hand, a network with a unique ID for every device and individual lets spammers and kiddie porn peddlers get blocked, but also gives the gov't, or anti-abortion activists, or your carzy ex, find out who and where you are.
So, what do we do? Continue with the awkward practice of a partially anonymous network and optional, somewhat reliable authentication? Or do we move further towards one of the other ends of the spectrum?
We may actually start to see this happen as mobile net access becomes more common. Since there's a definate limit to what kinds of information will be useful (or usable) to someone working on a 300 pixes square screen and small keypad, moving the sites that those people are most likely to use onto a seperate, but linked, "cache" network (think Akamai on a different protocol or port) could help ease the burden on the rest of the network.