Everyone, repeat everyone should read both of the articles you mentioned. Especially toward the end where it discusses Rambus' attempts to subvert the JEDEC standards discussions by sneaking part of the spec into their patent application(s), and the industry's responses.
Here's hoping that Rambus goes down the flaming road to hell, and that the majority of the non-corporate investors bail out before they get hurt too much more.
"In the end, revolutionaries could do more to marginalize the operating system through zealous adherence to a misguided interpretation of the open-source movement."
So, what are we supposed to do instead? Trust that some other entity (government and/or corporate interests) will tell us what we need/don't need in an OS? Sorry, the truth is we've all been taken down that road before (re: MSFT).
"There is no need for a revolution," Love said. "Those who cry for revolution will limit your choice in the end."
This would be true only if the Linux/BSD revolutions were only about technology, and even then I have my doubts. But this revolution is alot more like another one -- also fought to promote the idea that having one's interests determined by some elitist group that puts it's own self interest above the interests of the people (the British monarchy in the mid-late 1700's). When a revolution is first and foremost about freedom, it doesn't limit choices, it promotes them.
So I hope Mr. Ransom Love catches a cluestick upside the head and realizes that we're free to choose another train than the one he thinks he's driving.
The main reason to use templates is to enable a consistent look and feel across a high number of pages by changing just one HTML template.
As far as your code example, I might be missing something (A technique I don't know?) in what Apache would do (where you mentioned "title.gif.de", etc.)
How would the browser know that the file was a GIF, etc. with a.de ending, etc.
(IANA PHP Guru, but here goes anyway). Let me start by saying that IMO there's no easy answers for this because translating between different languages is inherently difficult. [I read, speak, and can write in a couple different non-English languages (Japanese and Spanish if you're curious), and because of those languages can read a bit of other related languages]. That said, the portal site I am working on is meant to be multi-lingual later on, so maybe some of my thoughts can help answer the "ask/." question:
Start with the current/. codebase as a learning resource. I recommend this even though the Slash code is in Perl and somewhat complex because of how extensively/. relies on the MySQL database and user preferences in the generation of the page. Once you understand the concepts, you can implement your own user preferences related to language.
Use templates stored in the database to build the page from a common code engine. For example, if my preference is "language=English" and another user's preference is "language=Espanol", then I can build a MySQL select statement that looks something like this:
"Select page_template from pages where language = {user_preference} and page_id = {the page which the user is asking for}
where the items in brackets {} are replaced by the web server code.
Design templates to be multi-lingual. For example, the logo for/. is a graphic containing the English words "Slashdot News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", and the image is part of a hypertext link. So the HTML for the image is like this:
<A href=http://slashdot.org/><IMG
src="http://images.slashdot.org/title.gif" width=275 height=72 border=0 alt="Welcome to Slashdot"></A>
So what would a multilingual version look like? Well, for example, assume that the Spanish (Espanol) version should go to "http://www.Spanish.Slashdot.Org". Here's the same HTML except using token strings for the language specific items:
Then you write the PHP code to replace the tokens (the part between the number sign pairs (##_____##) with the user's preferences (which was probably stored in a client side cookie) [Note: this example implies that you have images for the different languages]
If you understand these techniques, you are well on your way to creating a multi-lingual site in my book.
As you know, there are serious threats to what we refer to as the "freedom of the Internet", such as the
Method of Business Patents (Amazon, etc.)
deCSS court cases
RIAA vs. MP3, Napster, etc.
Censorship cases [Mattel vs. CP Hack, Australia's censorship attempts, the Demon UK ruling, etc.]
conflicting versions of Java, Javascript, etc.
domain registration conflicts
DCMA and UCITA legislation
What do you think that we need to do to insure that free, open source (GPL, LGPL, etc.) software survives in this current litigious and regulatory climate?
Photogenics was/is a good program -- used it a bit on a friend's Amiga years ago, and I wouldn't think that Paul Nolan would just sit on his duff and do nothing in the meantime, so I would expect this to be a top notch product when it's ready for prime time.
That said, I wish the web site had more information on which versions of Linux the beta is supposed to be able to run under. I'm in the process of configuring a Linux system for a graphic artist I am working with, and not knowing which Linux distro Photogenics is aimed at keeps me from being able to seriously consider it as an option.
Does anybody have more info on the beta's target platforms?
Okay Grammar Man, you caught me. If a person could moderate and post on the same thread, I'd even give you a point -- if I had one, that is. As is, that'll teach me to type phonetically instead of carefully...
Of course (wink wink) I coulda been trying to say "read here, read here!!" which is what all of our/. posts are really saying, isn't it?;-)
My jaw just dropped about a foot, because even though I've offered anonymous 800 number hotlines in the past (none active right now, sorry), and paid the bills, etc., it never even occurred to me how easy it would have been to break the anonymity by back tracing the numbers.
With a little note on the side: I come from a decent family but one that had alot of emotional problems at home.
Here it is twenty odd years later, and now I'm a dad (two girls thank you), and you know what? I look around and what I see isn't a lack of caring parents, it's a lack of parents who have good parenting skills, you know, little things like:
Uncritical listening, which is where a young person can go to a parent with whatever is bothering them, and not get an angry, explosive response or an emotional withdrawing.
Consistent application of fair discipline, that is, a parent saying what they mean, meaning what they say, and sticking to their guns in administering discipline where the consequence is the right size for the bad action of the kid.
Showing willingness to learn together, rather than "preaching from on high".
Granted, my parents were horrible examples of these kinds of things, but they tried, and I knew they were trying, which went a long way toward reconciling the mistakes. And I'm way short of perfect in these areas myself.
I just wish this stuff was easily learned and shared, so that the young people I see around me stood a better chance of being happy in the long term, no matter who they are, how they currently express themselves, or what their situation may be.
I didn't expect Pinkerton's to change their opinion much, even though I hoped they would. But I still commend Slashdot for sending you, and Pinkertons for at least listening. As an alternative to what Pinkertons, however, I have opened an email hotline of my own (even prior to the website's deployment) which I want to offer to the Slashdot community and the world at large:
I set this up from work (where I don't have access to outside Pop3 accounts yet, so I haven't had time to test it out yet. My guess is that by the time I get home tonight, there will be a few messages in the box, so I can report tomorrow whether or not it worked, and make changes.
The hotline isn't for reporting, it's for "listening" to folks that are hurting inside [my primary email listed on/. isn't "listener" for nothing].
I may not answer every email, but I will at least try, and where there are alot of similar questions, I will respond on the CityOfDreams Website over time.
All responses will be kept anonymous
Spams, flames, and trolls will be summarily blocked, ignored, etc. So don't even bother.
Hopefully my little bit helps to make the world a better place.
I'd like to point out a couple of things, however. In your post you said that "...companies like Loki are trying their best, but the games they are porting are older ones which have lost that "cutting edge" feel which new games have."
There are two very important facets of this "game porting" which do not show up immediately. One is that the profit from the games gives gaming companies the revenue they need to develop state of the art Linux games, but the second is even more important: you don't go from zero to hero in the graphics world overnight, that is, you can't just start writing a 3D game engine until you have a flexible, powerful 3D library built up -- which is exactly what Loki gains by doing all the ports of other games. Loki's port of Heavy Gear II featured a number of firsts:
First conversion from Direct3D to OpenGL
First to support 3D audio effects using OpenAL
First to have joystick support using SDL
but the important thing about a "first" is that it implies that there will be a second, third, 100th, etc.
So while I agree that Windows is currently the top game OS, I'm reminded of the fact that it took YEARS for Windows to get there from the old DOS shoot 'em bang-bang games like Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, and WolfenStein.
The transition to Windows games was a direct result of Microsoft opening the DirectX engine so that manufacturers could write better drivers, not the other way around. And honest, open benchmarks are the only way I know for a company to improve their drivers, wouldn't you agree?
Their file formats APIs, and protocols are intellectual property, which they can't be forced to disclose. Just like Novell doesn't have to disclose the intellectual property known as NDS, even though they essentially have a monopoly on it (not being open source *grin*).
Licenses are in accordance with law, which is why M$ is pushing UCITA so hard -- to prevent reverse engineering even when it offers inter-operability (which is legal under the DCMA). So if M$ contracts are in conjunction with the law, the judge can't force them to change those either.
Microsoft protocols? They change every protocol they can so that no-one else's software (which uses the protocol correctly prior to the change) no longer interoperates with WinXX.
Now then, my final point: if the cost for Windows goes up, the cost for IE goes up, and the cost of the apps goes up, consumers still have other choices -- perhaps not as powerful, but choices nonetheless. Heck, if I want an airplane that cruises at 200 MPH, I have to pay more than for a lowly Cessna too. If the costs go too high, folks buy Beos, Smartsuite, Netscape, etc., so the competition has more money to innovate, and their apps quickly catch M$ in quality, etc. So consumers make choices and the consumer market gives profitability to the companies whose software offers the best bang for the buck.
Hard to call that "damaging to the consumer" if you ask me.
For example, the MS office baby bill may still sign a contract to have wordpad included in MS OSes. There is no reason why they would try to beat the OS baby bill.
Okay, but now at the same time I (a competitor to the MS Office Baby Bill) offer the OS group a much better Wordpad, for a lower price. Guess which Wordpad they have to include in the OS in order to maximize profit?
Now the OS group isn't financially supporting MS-Office group, they're supporting the competition...
Let me gently state my opinion and agree that you are not.
Let me point out how splitting the company would help, using the browser as an example.
The Internet group has to maximize their profit, so they can't just give the browser away any more (unless they have another source of revenue) and they determine that they can add 20% more revenue if they port IE to Linux and sell it for $20. So they do so, and then the OS group comes up with Win2XXX which sucks royally, and the whole world says "f--- this" and goes to Linux. The Internet group is still has to make money, even as the OS group is dying off. So they continue making IE for Linux, Apple, xBSD, and they sell IE, Internet servers, etc. on all these platforms and make a ton of money.
Here's where it comes home: Let's say that Dell, Gateway, Micron, and IBM all decided to sell x86 PC's with Beos or Linux instead of Win2XXXX. In order to put IE on the desktop of these machines, M$ Web company can't withhold the OS and use it to beat the hardware vendors to death with high margins on the OS price, they have to negotiate the best deal they can for the inclusion of the browser, because they have to maximize profit by selling their browser for these other OS machines.
Do you see how the company separation made the playing field more competitive in this case? Similarly, I'd love to be able to have a "SQL Server for Linux", or even "MS-Access 2000 for Linux". If the applications group is separated from the OS and Internet groups, and they determine that the best way to make the most money is to port their apps to other OS's, they are legally bound to do so. Similarly, the apps group wouldn't be able to give their profits away to support OS development, free browsers, etc. because the stock holders would sue them. That's how it would help.
I don't know what brand of crack the Netscape team is on to think they can compete building a program on the enemy's platform.
You miss the point. Try running IE on Linux or Beos, or xBSD, or HP-UX, or... What's that? it doesn't exist for that platform? Netscape's browser always existed on more platforms, so by killing Netscape with illegal tactics, what M$ was really after was damaging the other OS's ability to compete in the Internet arena. Same thing by corrupting Java, same thing by corrupting MS-DOS to damage DR-DOS, etc. The M$ goal hasn't been to be the best product out there -- it's been to be the ONLY product out there. Get it?
Interesting article, a few points of while I'd like to respond to:
So Microsoft introduced Access at an MSRP of $99, and effectively destroyed Borland.
None of us (except perhaps Borland stockholders) have a problem with that -- it's known as competition. Nantucket (Now Computer Associates) Clipper product was eating Ashton Tate's lunch as well -- cheap and higher performing. Just like Beos is currently a cheaper, higher performing x86 operating system than Win9X.
The author's next thought was about enterprise level database systems: Oracle vs. SQL Server, etc. Who got screwed? Sybase. (Not sure whether the screw was 100% legal or not, BTW) Again, this was competition.
Next up, Novell. While the author states that Novell's wounds were self inflicted (in my mind implying that a competing file server (WinNT Server) simply gained market share by aggressive tactics, this statement simply isn't 100% accurate true. WinNT Server only became stable after M$ software engineers illegally got copies of some of the core Netware protocol source code.
Apple? their so called cash infusion was basically a stock payoff to settle litigation which M$ would have probably lost.
Corel? Well, depends on the group. Word Perfect shot themselves in the foot with a howitzer by not beating M$ word to the punch with a Windows version of their flagship project. But there again, this is competition. And so on and so forth.
But none of these are what the DOJ case is about. The DoJ case is about M$ using illegal tactics to squash Netscape in order to enforce their operating system Monopoly, just like the Sun case vs. M$ was settled in favor of Sun because M$ tried to corrupt Java -- again, in order to enforce their OS monopoly.
That, my friend is where people get hurt -- by the lack of choice with anyone wanting to compete with M$ in the x86 arena.
Excellent points. My reference to Microsoft's "freedom to innovate" is in reference to their standard response to why the DoJ should have taken a flying leap and never filed suit in the first place.
"You can't tell us what to do", they seem to say, "that would stifle our freedom to innovate". To which we all say, bull----, M$ innovates as a secondary consideration to controlling and dominating the software markets.
Amazing how money continues to oil the world in favor of the big companies. ABC prints a poll that says most people don't support a Microsoft breakup, when most people don't even know what the issues are; the Washington Post echoes the poll, we'll be seeing it on the news pretty quickly, and I can just about guarantee that the pundits will quickly fall in line with the parent company's cash cow, AKA Microsoft marketing $. [off topic personal peave alert: the same way that magazines reliably rate HP scanners, printers, etc. as Editor's choices using really screwey logic to lower the competition's ratings -- in order to keep the HP advertising $ flowing in.]
The Congressional representatives from Washington (who reap alot of financial campaign benefit from Microsoft support, BTW) will use their political power to try to minimize damage to the "home team", so to say. So I'm not surprised that Of course attorneys are going to try NOT to hit Microsoft too hard -- there's way too much money and power on the table.
A structural breakup works because securities law forces each of the so called baby bills to maximize profit individually -- even at the expense of other M$ operations. While the gov't attorneys wonder if "breakup plans, such as dividing Microsoft into an operating-system company and a software applications company, might be ineffective in breaking the company's lock on the market for personal-computer operating systems.", I personally don't see any other way.
Anyway, I hope that Judge Jackson understands things well enough to see that unless a breakup is the remedy, M$ will attempt to go on with business as usual, like was mentioned in a C/NET Article on Monday -- bundling as usual in Windows ME (Millenium Edition's new name).
My hope is that the judge chooses the remedy, then implements it in a way that will minimize the risk of it being overturned.
IMHO This doesn't have to be a win-lose for anyone -- the M$ stockholders could benefit, each M$ division would be free to innovate, and yet the playing field for the rest of the world would still be more level than it is now.
While I see alot of folks who are essentially saying that it can't be done, for once I'm going to actually do the download and try it out, and maybe report back to/. in a few weeks(?).
So far I can test for NT, Win9X, OS-2, and a few of the Linuxes (2.0X kernels though).
I think my main test will be for a TWAIN scanner I bought back in '94, because I have the Win source code for both TWAIN21 and the scanner, but I am wondering if this is a good test or not, whether I should get a set of 2.2X kernels first, or what.
Just an opinion here, but if a person started with a good set of base class libraries for each platform, then building the common interfaces into a cross-platform driver and testing it shouldn't be too terribly difficult. Am I missing anything in my thoughts about all of this?
I'm wondering how this technology differs from the so-called "bubble" memory that was being researched in the mid '80s, other than the higher density.
IIRC those chips were made out of a thin layer of garnet, and the description of the individual memory cells being shaped like "tiny doughnuts" rings a bell. At the time I think the biggest one they had was about 500K, but considering how much smaller the current electronic paths are in state of the art semi-conductors compared to what was available in 1986), I find myself wondering how this "new" technology is different from the older one. Is anyone out there in/. land familiar with both enough to fill in the details?
Isn't the idea of a "honeypot" to invite cracking attempts?
It seems like the whole point is to find out how the cracking attempt is being done, so it makes sense to me to do what others have done, which is to have cracking contests with tangible rewards, and then progressively harden the target machine to repel the attacks. As soon as someone cracks the machine, they get the reward/recognition, etc.
Of course, if the right company/person were in charge of the targeted machine, they would be able to advise, Apache, RH, M$, etc. of how the crack was done, and give the coders a jump on blocking the crack before restarting the whole process with the newly hardened target.
Hell, if I were in charge of one of the big OS/Software companies, I'd probably try to set something like this up just for that purpose. Cheaper than finding out about an exploit just after you received your new order of 10,000 CD-ROMS, don't you think?
Forgot one question. Basically a CPU routes an electrical signal through a bunch of electronic pathways, yielding a digital result on another set of pins elsewhere.
So even with the alleged 100GB transmission speeds, the signal has to travel a certain distance, and the distance it can travel is limited by the speed of light.
When I was studying photonic chips about a year ago, the fastest CPU I could think of might have clocked out between 10-50 GHz.
This sounds really REALLY REALLY good. To the extent that I thought I was having a April Fools Day flashback. My musings are all related to how quickly (if the report is true) it would take to transition the substance into useful digital technology.
It mentions that the substance can be "painted on". How would it be applied to create the type of etched patterns required for a microprocessor, ram chip, etc.?
Digital applications require on/off transistors. Does the fact that the substance has a really fast transmission rate mean anything in an of itself, or is there another fundamental discovery (how to make a transistor out of it) required?
What about bleed over/cross talk?
Switching speed?
As you can see, I'm limited in my knowledge of anything but the basic electronics, but that's where everything starts. So I invite y'all to fill in the blanks, so I can sit back and learn from the commentary.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's hoping that Rambus goes down the flaming road to hell, and that the majority of the non-corporate investors bail out before they get hurt too much more.
So, what are we supposed to do instead? Trust that some other entity (government and/or corporate interests) will tell us what we need/don't need in an OS? Sorry, the truth is we've all been taken down that road before (re: MSFT).
"There is no need for a revolution," Love said. "Those who cry for revolution will limit your choice in the end."
This would be true only if the Linux/BSD revolutions were only about technology, and even then I have my doubts. But this revolution is alot more like another one -- also fought to promote the idea that having one's interests determined by some elitist group that puts it's own self interest above the interests of the people (the British monarchy in the mid-late 1700's). When a revolution is first and foremost about freedom, it doesn't limit choices, it promotes them.
So I hope Mr. Ransom Love catches a cluestick upside the head and realizes that we're free to choose another train than the one he thinks he's driving.
As far as your code example, I might be missing something (A technique I don't know?) in what Apache would do (where you mentioned "title.gif.de", etc.)
How would the browser know that the file was a GIF, etc. with a .de ending, etc.
- Start with the current
/. codebase as a learning resource. I recommend this even though the Slash code is in Perl and somewhat complex because of how extensively /. relies on the MySQL database and user preferences in the generation of the page. Once you understand the concepts, you can implement your own user preferences related to language. - Use templates stored in the database to build the page from a common code engine. For example, if my preference is "language=English" and another user's preference is "language=Espanol", then I can build a MySQL select statement that looks something like this: where the items in brackets {} are replaced by the web server code.
- Design templates to be multi-lingual. For example, the logo for
/. is a graphic containing the English words "Slashdot News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", and the image is part of a hypertext link. So the HTML for the image is like this:So what would a multilingual version look like? Well, for example, assume that the Spanish (Espanol) version should go to "http://www.Spanish.Slashdot.Org". Here's the same HTML except using token strings for the language specific items:Then you write the PHP code to replace the tokens (the part between the number sign pairs (##_____##) with the user's preferences (which was probably stored in a client side cookie) [Note: this example implies that you have images for the different languages]
If you understand these techniques, you are well on your way to creating a multi-lingual site in my book.- Method of Business Patents (Amazon, etc.)
- deCSS court cases
- RIAA vs. MP3, Napster, etc.
- Censorship cases [Mattel vs. CP Hack, Australia's censorship attempts, the Demon UK ruling, etc.]
- conflicting versions of Java, Javascript, etc.
- domain registration conflicts
- DCMA and UCITA legislation
What do you think that we need to do to insure that free, open source (GPL, LGPL, etc.) software survives in this current litigious and regulatory climate?That said, I wish the web site had more information on which versions of Linux the beta is supposed to be able to run under. I'm in the process of configuring a Linux system for a graphic artist I am working with, and not knowing which Linux distro Photogenics is aimed at keeps me from being able to seriously consider it as an option.
Does anybody have more info on the beta's target platforms?
Of course (wink wink) I coulda been trying to say "read here, read here!!" which is what all of our /. posts are really saying, isn't it? ;-)
Excellent, excellent point.
With a little note on the side: I come from a decent family but one that had alot of emotional problems at home.
Here it is twenty odd years later, and now I'm a dad (two girls thank you), and you know what? I look around and what I see isn't a lack of caring parents, it's a lack of parents who have good parenting skills, you know, little things like:
- Uncritical listening, which is where a young person can go to a parent with whatever is bothering them, and not get an angry, explosive response or an emotional withdrawing.
- Consistent application of fair discipline, that is, a parent saying what they mean, meaning what they say, and sticking to their guns in administering discipline where the consequence is the right size for the bad action of the kid.
- Showing willingness to learn together, rather than "preaching from on high".
Granted, my parents were horrible examples of these kinds of things, but they tried, and I knew they were trying, which went a long way toward reconciling the mistakes. And I'm way short of perfect in these areas myself.I just wish this stuff was easily learned and shared, so that the young people I see around me stood a better chance of being happy in the long term, no matter who they are, how they currently express themselves, or what their situation may be.
Hopefully my little bit helps to make the world a better place.
I'd like to point out a couple of things, however. In your post you said that "...companies like Loki are trying their best, but the games they are porting are older ones which have lost that "cutting edge" feel which new games have."
There are two very important facets of this "game porting" which do not show up immediately. One is that the profit from the games gives gaming companies the revenue they need to develop state of the art Linux games, but the second is even more important: you don't go from zero to hero in the graphics world overnight, that is, you can't just start writing a 3D game engine until you have a flexible, powerful 3D library built up -- which is exactly what Loki gains by doing all the ports of other games. Loki's port of Heavy Gear II featured a number of firsts:
- First conversion from Direct3D to OpenGL
- First to support 3D audio effects using OpenAL
- First to have joystick support using SDL
but the important thing about a "first" is that it implies that there will be a second, third, 100th, etc.So while I agree that Windows is currently the top game OS, I'm reminded of the fact that it took YEARS for Windows to get there from the old DOS shoot 'em bang-bang games like Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, and WolfenStein.
The transition to Windows games was a direct result of Microsoft opening the DirectX engine so that manufacturers could write better drivers, not the other way around. And honest, open benchmarks are the only way I know for a company to improve their drivers, wouldn't you agree?
- Their file formats APIs, and protocols are intellectual property, which they can't be forced to disclose. Just like Novell doesn't have to disclose the intellectual property known as NDS, even though they essentially have a monopoly on it (not being open source *grin*).
- Licenses are in accordance with law, which is why M$ is pushing UCITA so hard -- to prevent reverse engineering even when it offers inter-operability (which is legal under the DCMA). So if M$ contracts are in conjunction with the law, the judge can't force them to change those either.
- Microsoft protocols? They change every protocol they can so that no-one else's software (which uses the protocol correctly prior to the change) no longer interoperates with WinXX.
Now then, my final point: if the cost for Windows goes up, the cost for IE goes up, and the cost of the apps goes up, consumers still have other choices -- perhaps not as powerful, but choices nonetheless. Heck, if I want an airplane that cruises at 200 MPH, I have to pay more than for a lowly Cessna too. If the costs go too high, folks buy Beos, Smartsuite, Netscape, etc., so the competition has more money to innovate, and their apps quickly catch M$ in quality, etc. So consumers make choices and the consumer market gives profitability to the companies whose software offers the best bang for the buck.Hard to call that "damaging to the consumer" if you ask me.
Okay, but now at the same time I (a competitor to the MS Office Baby Bill) offer the OS group a much better Wordpad, for a lower price. Guess which Wordpad they have to include in the OS in order to maximize profit?
Now the OS group isn't financially supporting MS-Office group, they're supporting the competition...
Let me gently state my opinion and agree that you are not.
Let me point out how splitting the company would help, using the browser as an example.
The Internet group has to maximize their profit, so they can't just give the browser away any more (unless they have another source of revenue) and they determine that they can add 20% more revenue if they port IE to Linux and sell it for $20. So they do so, and then the OS group comes up with Win2XXX which sucks royally, and the whole world says "f--- this" and goes to Linux. The Internet group is still has to make money, even as the OS group is dying off. So they continue making IE for Linux, Apple, xBSD, and they sell IE, Internet servers, etc. on all these platforms and make a ton of money.
Here's where it comes home: Let's say that Dell, Gateway, Micron, and IBM all decided to sell x86 PC's with Beos or Linux instead of Win2XXXX. In order to put IE on the desktop of these machines, M$ Web company can't withhold the OS and use it to beat the hardware vendors to death with high margins on the OS price, they have to negotiate the best deal they can for the inclusion of the browser, because they have to maximize profit by selling their browser for these other OS machines.
Do you see how the company separation made the playing field more competitive in this case? Similarly, I'd love to be able to have a "SQL Server for Linux", or even "MS-Access 2000 for Linux". If the applications group is separated from the OS and Internet groups, and they determine that the best way to make the most money is to port their apps to other OS's, they are legally bound to do so. Similarly, the apps group wouldn't be able to give their profits away to support OS development, free browsers, etc. because the stock holders would sue them. That's how it would help.
I don't know what brand of crack the Netscape team is on to think they can compete building a program on the enemy's platform.
You miss the point. Try running IE on Linux or Beos, or xBSD, or HP-UX, or... What's that? it doesn't exist for that platform? Netscape's browser always existed on more platforms, so by killing Netscape with illegal tactics, what M$ was really after was damaging the other OS's ability to compete in the Internet arena. Same thing by corrupting Java, same thing by corrupting MS-DOS to damage DR-DOS, etc. The M$ goal hasn't been to be the best product out there -- it's been to be the ONLY product out there. Get it?
The author's next thought was about enterprise level database systems: Oracle vs. SQL Server, etc. Who got screwed? Sybase. (Not sure whether the screw was 100% legal or not, BTW) Again, this was competition.
Next up, Novell. While the author states that Novell's wounds were self inflicted (in my mind implying that a competing file server (WinNT Server) simply gained market share by aggressive tactics, this statement simply isn't 100% accurate true. WinNT Server only became stable after M$ software engineers illegally got copies of some of the core Netware protocol source code.
Apple? their so called cash infusion was basically a stock payoff to settle litigation which M$ would have probably lost.
Corel? Well, depends on the group. Word Perfect shot themselves in the foot with a howitzer by not beating M$ word to the punch with a Windows version of their flagship project. But there again, this is competition. And so on and so forth.
But none of these are what the DOJ case is about. The DoJ case is about M$ using illegal tactics to squash Netscape in order to enforce their operating system Monopoly, just like the Sun case vs. M$ was settled in favor of Sun because M$ tried to corrupt Java -- again, in order to enforce their OS monopoly.
That, my friend is where people get hurt -- by the lack of choice with anyone wanting to compete with M$ in the x86 arena.
"You can't tell us what to do", they seem to say, "that would stifle our freedom to innovate". To which we all say, bull----, M$ innovates as a secondary consideration to controlling and dominating the software markets.
The Congressional representatives from Washington (who reap alot of financial campaign benefit from Microsoft support, BTW) will use their political power to try to minimize damage to the "home team", so to say. So I'm not surprised that Of course attorneys are going to try NOT to hit Microsoft too hard -- there's way too much money and power on the table.
A structural breakup works because securities law forces each of the so called baby bills to maximize profit individually -- even at the expense of other M$ operations. While the gov't attorneys wonder if "breakup plans, such as dividing Microsoft into an operating-system company and a software applications company, might be ineffective in breaking the company's lock on the market for personal-computer operating systems.", I personally don't see any other way.
Anyway, I hope that Judge Jackson understands things well enough to see that unless a breakup is the remedy, M$ will attempt to go on with business as usual, like was mentioned in a C/NET Article on Monday -- bundling as usual in Windows ME (Millenium Edition's new name).
My hope is that the judge chooses the remedy, then implements it in a way that will minimize the risk of it being overturned.
IMHO This doesn't have to be a win-lose for anyone -- the M$ stockholders could benefit, each M$ division would be free to innovate, and yet the playing field for the rest of the world would still be more level than it is now.
Good idea. Consider it added.
Darn, missed the preview button again. I meant "TWAIN32".
So far I can test for NT, Win9X, OS-2, and a few of the Linuxes (2.0X kernels though).
I think my main test will be for a TWAIN scanner I bought back in '94, because I have the Win source code for both TWAIN21 and the scanner, but I am wondering if this is a good test or not, whether I should get a set of 2.2X kernels first, or what.
Just an opinion here, but if a person started with a good set of base class libraries for each platform, then building the common interfaces into a cross-platform driver and testing it shouldn't be too terribly difficult. Am I missing anything in my thoughts about all of this?
--Crash!!--
Your 5,000 lb. SUV just hit my little ole Saturn SL-1. I'm dead, you're not.
Of course, if my little ole' Saturn were a wee bit taller (gripe gripe), I mighta had a chance of seeing ya and getting outta da way. As it is, RIP.
IIRC those chips were made out of a thin layer of garnet, and the description of the individual memory cells being shaped like "tiny doughnuts" rings a bell. At the time I think the biggest one they had was about 500K, but considering how much smaller the current electronic paths are in state of the art semi-conductors compared to what was available in 1986), I find myself wondering how this "new" technology is different from the older one. Is anyone out there in /. land familiar with both enough to fill in the details?
It seems like the whole point is to find out how the cracking attempt is being done, so it makes sense to me to do what others have done, which is to have cracking contests with tangible rewards, and then progressively harden the target machine to repel the attacks. As soon as someone cracks the machine, they get the reward/recognition, etc.
Of course, if the right company/person were in charge of the targeted machine, they would be able to advise, Apache, RH, M$, etc. of how the crack was done, and give the coders a jump on blocking the crack before restarting the whole process with the newly hardened target.
Hell, if I were in charge of one of the big OS/Software companies, I'd probably try to set something like this up just for that purpose. Cheaper than finding out about an exploit just after you received your new order of 10,000 CD-ROMS, don't you think?
So even with the alleged 100GB transmission speeds, the signal has to travel a certain distance, and the distance it can travel is limited by the speed of light.
When I was studying photonic chips about a year ago, the fastest CPU I could think of might have clocked out between 10-50 GHz.
Am I missing anything here?
- It mentions that the substance can be "painted on". How would it be applied to create the type of etched patterns required for a microprocessor, ram chip, etc.?
- Digital applications require on/off transistors. Does the fact that the substance has a really fast transmission rate mean anything in an of itself, or is there another fundamental discovery (how to make a transistor out of it) required?
- What about bleed over/cross talk?
- Switching speed?
As you can see, I'm limited in my knowledge of anything but the basic electronics, but that's where everything starts. So I invite y'all to fill in the blanks, so I can sit back and learn from the commentary.