Nevertheless, IMHO, certification of software developers is a bad thing. Certified people are easier to trade since they get a shrink-wrapped quality tag. This is benificiary to non-techie managers, but not to us code monkeys. Certificates become outdated in no time. Does anyone still care about a Certified Y2K Compliancy Engineer?
Learn a trick - get certified - get ditched...and you're back where you started. You'll never become a good software engineer solely trough certificates.
Just my opinion, sorry to be somewhat off-topic.
-- In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But in practice there is -- Jan L.A. van Snepscheut
Wow. Can you imagine a pacemaker without internet access? Seems outragously boring... almost like riding on a bus with Sandra Bullock, but without a bomb. Get Real!
Who would ever trust his life to a device that's not internet connected?
On/Off-Switch Only Available to Registered Devels
on
The Power of Palladium
·
· Score: 2
There'll probably be a switch like that, but why should it be available to non-corporates? Hobbyists are hackers, right? And hackers are bad for national security, right? Why not go back to the glorious pre-microcomputer age, when we had to go through corporate/university trash to find ourselves a freakin' manual!?!
Not my idea of inovation, but I bet M$ would love it that way...
-- The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents -- Nathaniel Borenstein
China? They don't seem to care to much about reverse engineering, patents or copyrights...
> Name one halfway modernized country whose government is on the whole more in touch with reality than all the rest.
Germany? The German government is well on top of web precence of extremist groups but is otherwise pretty Open Source and anti-patent minded. Holland? The Dutch government is pretty liberal in most respects. The XS4all service provider has its roots in the hacker community and has until now refused disclosure of any userinfo of non-convicted members to any organization. Then again you're probably right about the EU's intentions, so you're better off in Norwegia. Also, don't forget that in Europe patent lawsuits - or lawsuits in general - are less common than in the US. Most disputes are solved by common sense, rather than big bucks.
> >So when the government will eventually discover the DMCA was a counter- innovative idea, I suppose they'd get rid of it, right?!?
> Hahaha, oh, that's a good one. [...] Exhibit A [...] Exhibit B
I meant that as a joke, but thanks for refreshing my memory. My rherorical question was meant to point out how a capitalistic democratic society still manages to fuck up its free market. I bet that once a government funded anti-cyberterrorism BSA-alike organization has come into place, it will take a couple of centuries to discover/uncover what went wrong...
However, if you'd like to give them politicians a wake-up call, then you would need a clear signal. Like a general strike of all university and free-thinking-companies related professors, researchers and students. Get media attention, threaten to leave the country, point out the economy doesn't benefit from the brain-drain. Go on strike, the French way! (Also a joke;-)
> [...]getting a naked PC is as easy as buying parts and putting them together.
True, but don't forget the OEM's commercials might have been modestly subsidized by M$ if only they'd agreed to ship all their hardware with Windows. Buying your hardware naked means having to pay that hole. Still, I'd have to agree that -1 + 1 = 0, so no real harm done here except for the abscence of commercials, thus sales volume, thus production volume, thus economy of scale. But I'd have to admit, it's not to strong an argument.
> In other words, this only affects people who buy brand-name computers. Such people are unlikely to care if there is no software anyways.
...But they are a lot. In fact, they are the majority. This group includes companies that buy internet servers running Linux + Apache. Don't ask me why, but Dell, Siemens, IBM, HP,... seem to have an added value of trustworthiness or hardware quality that appeals to managers. Oh, and don't forget that many whitebox retailers sell theirs with Windows.
Before the majority - or at least a large part of them - starts buying whiteboxes or Macs Microsoft's market share will remain - even though Linux is a free as beer.
So why all this fuss about the millenium act? Doesn't it mean that reverse engineering is "a bad thing" only within the US? Why would anybody outside the US ever bother about it? And for that matter, why should Americans? My advice: migrate to a country with more liberties.
If the act would really be harmful to innovation, why don't all innovaters move outside the US? Since the US government preaches a global free market, they'd promote (among other things) freedom of currencies, freedom of goods and freedom of labour. So when the government will eventually discover the DMCA was a counter-innovative idea, I suppose they'd get rid of it, right?!? They'd understand that better than any other organization.
You can't win all fights within your castle's walls.
(This post was probably a bad (or at least arguable) idea - so forgive my ignorance. No need to flame.)
-- Everything that can be invented, has been invented -- Charles H. Dueel, 1899
- First, most people do not but Microsofware, they buy computers with Microsoftware preinstalled. Even for geeks it's getting harder to buy a PC without all that junk.
- Second, Microsoft has improved the stability of its product, over the last years. Although at much slower than I'd consider acceptible, they are getting there. Therefore I think it's unlikely anything internet related is going to bring their market share down.
IMHO two other things can: computer sales and stock markets. Roughly speaking Microsoft gains a percentage of the global PC sales market and is thus almost directly linked to the number of computers sold. Note however, that this number doesn't influence market share, so Linux doesn't gain anything from economic slowdown.
Stock markets are always unpredictible as proven recently by Enron, Worldcom and the likes. Microsoft has quite succesfully denied abusing their monopoly until now, and will probably be as succesful in misleading the SEC when they have to.
But what I'm getting at is that M$ can only be hit where it hurts. As long as their $40 billion stays with marketing they remain virtually untouchable - and so is their market share. Until that changes, we can do little more than duck-and-cover. And I'm not at all optimistic about Microsoft's plans on "security".
Tune -- The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein
> The current unencumbered hardware isn't going to go away unless people stop buying it, or a law is made against it.
Both are more likely than you might think. Never forget that free market models are only applicable to free markets: Consumers do not have a free choice in an almost completely monopolized market. That is: I agree that nothing's lost until people actually start buying and using these Palladium based technologies, but what people buy or what people use is to very large extent a result of marketing. And - as we all know - Microsoft has a lot of resources to do "good" marketing...
> Next year though... things might be very different...
I'm not sure what you are implying:
1) Next year Lindows will trash Windows' desktop dominance 2) Next year Microsoft will suddenly have a stable server that happily cuddles with my ELF binaries;-)
> (HP internet extensions) which Linux seems unable to use properly
Hmm. Does Linux properly support all keys found on a ZX81/Spectrum? Even that (couch) wonderful "command completion" thing in BASIC? ' Guess not. No Linux at all for these micros...
I remember that to overcome cumbersome experiences with the ATM-like soft-touch/dead fish feeling, my dad built his own keyboard - from scratch, mostly. He used an old electric typewriter he found on a dump an bought for "just" $50 (real keyboards costed twice that in the early eigties). Using that piece of junk, a lot of wires and solder he finally got something that looked like a contemporary computer. Looked a bit like a C64. (My dad had gained some experience from previously building a keyboard for Acorn's System-1 computer, that came as a do-it-yourself-kit with just a few leds and the same 12 keys you'll find on any mobile phone today!)
Ah. Real pieces of art - but I was so happy when we got a BBC micro in '83.
> The [Sinclair ZX80] had 4KB of RAM (not 4MB, 4KB!).
Hmm. 4KB is probably less than the on-chip buffers found in current PS/2 keyboards.
Wow... back in the days, when a single.5 Mhz Z80 featured both as ZX81 CPU and video processor. The keyboard featured a set of keys for BASIC commands FAST and SLOW to switch off video output and boost the micro's performance.
The closest current analogy to this is probably the "sleep" key found on laptops!
That's not the point. I don't buy DVDs, I tape TV programs, using a crappy VHS.
Sure you can get your stuff a lot cheaper. I'd merely like to point out that many stores put a high tag on DVDs and most customers buy their discs in these stores, merely because customer satisfaction is in seeing - buying - using withing a short timespan; not having to turn on your computer, find a descent price and having to wait for a day or so. Many people have access tot good shopping centres within walking distance.
And in the end, what it comes down to in a free market, is that based on supply and demand, DVD vendors - like CD vendors - ask an unreasonably high price. We probably all agree that most people would not bother about p2p sharing if music discs would cost $4 and video discs $6. And that doesn't mean you have to rip off any artist.
> Music doesn't have that initial money from a movie theater type situation.
How about concerts, festivals and movie sound tracks? In your line of thinking, shouldn't life recordings, sound tracks and "best-of collections" be far less expensive?
New CDs cost 20-25 euros, video DVDs and games cost about twice. You can listen to a good CD hundreds of times, while most DVDs get boring after a few viewings (doesn't necessarily go for video games, though most of them suck IMHO).
I personally do not consider DVDs good value for money. (Most) current DVD players cannot record, the discs are expensive and their quality is also overated. Therefore, a lot should change before I'd consider trashing my good'ol crappy VHS.
Gene pools are wonderful things, aren't they?...And to think that these guys probably left the pool without the dubious honour of entering the hall of fame.
[...] Instead of aiming for 'end users', Linux desktops should aim at amateur developers [...]
Very good point. Though I think Windows' popularity stems from Microsoft's marketing, rather than its advantage to amateur developers, this is the thing that will attract amateur devels. To them, Linux has a "cool" rather a "complicated" image. In reality, however, Linux is far more complicate, primarily because it doesn't have a "clean singleminded" design and because good documentation is lacking.
What we need is a good development distro that includes stuff like Kylix, or a downsized Glade/CodeWarrior rather than StarOffice or WordPerfect.
What simple, yet powerful tools exist for Linux only?
"The Mother of All Cyber Battles"
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 1
Al Quaeda and cybercrime...
...Sure...
...I guess that when Bush were to decide to personally hijack a missile from Pakistan an to suicide crash it on top of that same country (or any other member of the evil triangle), Al Quaeda would respond forcefully by taking down some of "those American government websites that civilization depens on".
Let's keep focussed on desktop usage - all programmers with descent education know that Linux beats Windows.
> the "killer app" for me was "all of the above" windows gives me the buckwheats
To a desktop user, the killer app is probably wordprocessing, multimedia and games. Though these are all available on Linux, the do not have an added value (in terms of "ease of use", hardware support or "coolness"), but merely emulate what's available in Windows. And since - as you've mentioned - Apple has a pricetag, 90% of the users will stick with M$.
> With linux, I have a fleet of machines that cost me high end 125$ down to low end of 10$ that all run FAST, and I can multi task with them.
Let's suppose your figures are realistic. Isn't the problem that people expect to spend the same amount of money on a computer as they would on a TV set of videorecorder if they intend to use it as frequently. $500-$1000 is a "reasonable price" to many users; the problem is that at least $200 bucks thereof are MS's pure profit while the rest - the hardware - has a very slim margin.
> As to "lindows", I think it's silly.
So do I. But wine - or more generally - Windows interaction isn't silly.
I've had potential employers insist on "worddoc". for resume, I told them to GET STUFFED, I refuse, they get ascii.
Maybe that stuborn attitude works for you. Personally, I've never sent a Word formatted resume either and I used to rant about M$ product all the time. Still, I have never been able to convince my employers to stop developing software in Visual Studio - probably due to their "screw you, we insist on being stupid" mindset. But it's a fact that my ranting is futile, and I wish you luck in doing a better job at that.
Since Windows is a de facto standard and Linuxes - on the desktop - are outnumbered by far, doesn't it sound dubious to claim that "everybody is crazy and we're not"? Let's just assume modestly that there must be some advantages in MS's software that we - clueless - haven't jet discovered. And while waiting for that discovery, we should continue to extend Linux with features that give access to the real world where the big bucks are made.
Worst that can come of that is 1) geeks won't use these access features and others will stick with Windows 2) the Lindows beast will replace the Windows monster 3) Windows and Linux will coexist but won't be completely separated 4) the access features will ease the transition from Windows to Linux, not Lindows.
> People buy "crappy DVD players" that happen to have region free hacks because they're cheap, not because they're region free. 99% of the US market couldn't care less about non-region 1 DVDs.
You're probably right about the US, I don't know. You also have a good point since at least half of the (DVD) market is US centric.
On the other side of the atlantic ocean, however, "region free" is a *major* sales feature found in many advertisements. US citizens would care if they had to wait some extra months for many movies to become available. And to people regularly traveling to Japan, Signapore, Hongkong there's also the issue of market price.
A major point of difference wrt. copy protection in general however, is that the Palladium thing isn't primarily targetted agains copyright violation, but rather "secure" software distribution. Companies like Philips that expressly sell devices to copy CDs (or DVDs) gain from opposing conpy protection stuff, but in case of Palladium they're not a party.
However, the major obstacle on Microsoft's road to world domination are consumers. And if it's not MS's licensing that's going to turn against them, this may be it. Don't underestimate consumers' ability to judge both apples and oranges;-).
Slashdot Mirror
OK. $5000 is reasonable.
...and you're back where you started. You'll never become a good software engineer solely trough certificates.
Nevertheless, IMHO, certification of software developers is a bad thing. Certified people are easier to trade since they get a shrink-wrapped quality tag. This is benificiary to non-techie managers, but not to us code monkeys. Certificates become outdated in no time. Does anyone still care about a Certified Y2K Compliancy Engineer?
Learn a trick - get certified - get ditched
Just my opinion, sorry to be somewhat off-topic.
--
In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But in practice there is -- Jan L.A. van Snepscheut
Anyone saw Until the End of the World, starring William Hurt as a zombie addicted to his own dreams?
Wow. Can you imagine a pacemaker without internet access? Seems outragously boring... almost like riding on a bus with Sandra Bullock, but without a bomb. Get Real!
Who would ever trust his life to a device that's not internet connected?
There'll probably be a switch like that, but why should it be available to non-corporates? Hobbyists are hackers, right? And hackers are bad for national security, right? Why not go back to the glorious pre-microcomputer age, when we had to go through corporate/university trash to find ourselves a freakin' manual!?!
Not my idea of inovation, but I bet M$ would love it that way...
--
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents -- Nathaniel Borenstein
...Getting a 100m telescope up there...
> And go where?
;-)
China? They don't seem to care to much about reverse engineering, patents or copyrights...
> Name one halfway modernized country whose government is on the whole more in touch with reality than all the rest.
Germany? The German government is well on top of web precence of extremist groups but is otherwise pretty Open Source and anti-patent minded.
Holland? The Dutch government is pretty liberal in most respects. The XS4all service provider has its roots in the hacker community and has until now refused disclosure of any userinfo of non-convicted members to any organization.
Then again you're probably right about the EU's intentions, so you're better off in Norwegia. Also, don't forget that in Europe patent lawsuits - or lawsuits in general - are less common than in the US. Most disputes are solved by common sense, rather than big bucks.
> >So when the government will eventually discover the DMCA was a counter- innovative idea, I suppose they'd get rid of it, right?!?
> Hahaha, oh, that's a good one. [...] Exhibit A [...] Exhibit B
I meant that as a joke, but thanks for refreshing my memory. My rherorical question was meant to point out how a capitalistic democratic society still manages to fuck up its free market. I bet that once a government funded anti-cyberterrorism BSA-alike organization has come into place, it will take a couple of centuries to discover/uncover what went wrong...
However, if you'd like to give them politicians a wake-up call, then you would need a clear signal. Like a general strike of all university and free-thinking-companies related professors, researchers and students. Get media attention, threaten to leave the country, point out the economy doesn't benefit from the brain-drain. Go on strike, the French way! (Also a joke
> [...]getting a naked PC is as easy as buying parts and putting them together.
...But they are a lot. In fact, they are the majority. This group includes companies that buy internet servers running Linux + Apache. Don't ask me why, but Dell, Siemens, IBM, HP, ... seem to have an added value of trustworthiness or hardware quality that appeals to managers. Oh, and don't forget that many whitebox retailers sell theirs with Windows.
True, but don't forget the OEM's commercials might have been modestly subsidized by M$ if only they'd agreed to ship all their hardware with Windows. Buying your hardware naked means having to pay that hole. Still, I'd have to agree that -1 + 1 = 0, so no real harm done here except for the abscence of commercials, thus sales volume, thus production volume, thus economy of scale. But I'd have to admit, it's not to strong an argument.
> In other words, this only affects people who buy brand-name computers. Such people are unlikely to care if there is no software anyways.
Before the majority - or at least a large part of them - starts buying whiteboxes or Macs Microsoft's market share will remain - even though Linux is a free as beer.
So why all this fuss about the millenium act? Doesn't it mean that reverse engineering is "a bad thing" only within the US? Why would anybody outside the US ever bother about it? And for that matter, why should Americans? My advice: migrate to a country with more liberties.
If the act would really be harmful to innovation, why don't all innovaters move outside the US? Since the US government preaches a global free market, they'd promote (among other things) freedom of currencies, freedom of goods and freedom of labour. So when the government will eventually discover the DMCA was a counter-innovative idea, I suppose they'd get rid of it, right?!? They'd understand that better than any other organization.
You can't win all fights within your castle's walls.
(This post was probably a bad (or at least arguable) idea - so forgive my ignorance. No need to flame.)
--
Everything that can be invented, has been invented -- Charles H. Dueel, 1899
... This year or next year.
- First, most people do not but Microsofware, they buy computers with Microsoftware preinstalled. Even for geeks it's getting harder to buy a PC without all that junk.
- Second, Microsoft has improved the stability of its product, over the last years. Although at much slower than I'd consider acceptible, they are getting there. Therefore I think it's unlikely anything internet related is going to bring their market share down.
IMHO two other things can: computer sales and stock markets. Roughly speaking Microsoft gains a percentage of the global PC sales market and is thus almost directly linked to the number of computers sold. Note however, that this number doesn't influence market share, so Linux doesn't gain anything from economic slowdown.
Stock markets are always unpredictible as proven recently by Enron, Worldcom and the likes. Microsoft has quite succesfully denied abusing their monopoly until now, and will probably be as succesful in misleading the SEC when they have to.
But what I'm getting at is that M$ can only be hit where it hurts. As long as their $40 billion stays with marketing they remain virtually untouchable - and so is their market share. Until that changes, we can do little more than duck-and-cover. And I'm not at all optimistic about Microsoft's plans on "security".
Tune
--
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident.
That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein
> The current unencumbered hardware isn't going to go away unless people stop buying it, or a law is made against it.
Both are more likely than you might think. Never forget that free market models are only applicable to free markets: Consumers do not have a free choice in an almost completely monopolized market. That is: I agree that nothing's lost until people actually start buying and using these Palladium based technologies, but what people buy or what people use is to very large extent a result of marketing. And - as we all know - Microsoft has a lot of resources to do "good" marketing...
> Next year though ... things might be very different ...
;-)
I'm not sure what you are implying:
1) Next year Lindows will trash Windows' desktop dominance
2) Next year Microsoft will suddenly have a stable server that happily cuddles with my ELF binaries
> (HP internet extensions) which Linux seems unable to use properly
Hmm. Does Linux properly support all keys found on a ZX81/Spectrum? Even that (couch) wonderful "command completion" thing in BASIC? ' Guess not. No Linux at all for these micros...
I remember that to overcome cumbersome experiences with the ATM-like soft-touch/dead fish feeling, my dad built his own keyboard - from scratch, mostly. He used an old electric typewriter he found on a dump an bought for "just" $50 (real keyboards costed twice that in the early eigties). Using that piece of junk, a lot of wires and solder he finally got something that looked like a contemporary computer. Looked a bit like a C64. (My dad had gained some experience from previously building a keyboard for Acorn's System-1 computer, that came as a do-it-yourself-kit with just a few leds and the same 12 keys you'll find on any mobile phone today!)
Ah. Real pieces of art - but I was so happy when we got a BBC micro in '83.
> The [Sinclair ZX80] had 4KB of RAM (not 4MB, 4KB!).
.5 Mhz Z80 featured both as ZX81 CPU and video processor. The keyboard featured a set of keys for BASIC commands FAST and SLOW to switch off video output and boost the micro's performance.
Hmm. 4KB is probably less than the on-chip buffers found in current PS/2 keyboards.
Wow... back in the days, when a single
The closest current analogy to this is probably the "sleep" key found on laptops!
That's not the point. I don't buy DVDs, I tape TV programs, using a crappy VHS.
Sure you can get your stuff a lot cheaper. I'd merely like to point out that many stores put a high tag on DVDs and most customers buy their discs in these stores, merely because customer satisfaction is in seeing - buying - using withing a short timespan; not having to turn on your computer, find a descent price and having to wait for a day or so. Many people have access tot good shopping centres within walking distance.
And in the end, what it comes down to in a free market, is that based on supply and demand, DVD vendors - like CD vendors - ask an unreasonably high price. We probably all agree that most people would not bother about p2p sharing if music discs would cost $4 and video discs $6. And that doesn't mean you have to rip off any artist.
> Music doesn't have that initial money from a movie theater type situation.
How about concerts, festivals and movie sound tracks? In your line of thinking, shouldn't life recordings, sound tracks and "best-of collections" be far less expensive?
CDs are overpriced - agreed. But so are DVDs.
New CDs cost 20-25 euros, video DVDs and games cost about twice. You can listen to a good CD hundreds of times, while most DVDs get boring after a few viewings (doesn't necessarily go for video games, though most of them suck IMHO).
I personally do not consider DVDs good value for money. (Most) current DVD players cannot record, the discs are expensive and their quality is also overated. Therefore, a lot should change before I'd consider trashing my good'ol crappy VHS.
Gene pools are wonderful things, aren't they? ...And to think that these guys probably left the pool without the dubious honour of entering the hall of fame.
Is that so?
;-)
...Wow...
So we don't need money after all
So how come these muscled baboons act like psychopaths? Are they in for the money - is this "just" an excess of capitalism - or is it purely sadism?
Anyone with a clue?
Hmmm. These so-called "Bums" must be pretty freaky...
They're out there in the sewers...
They're definitely not human...
But they're ALIVE.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!!!!
---
So I guess the Al Quaeda network must be involved too.
> 2 months without most of the nation's backbone and 1000's of online businesses would be gone and even the brick & mortars would be reeling.
;-)
Ah well. 2 months with the nation's backbone and a 1000 online businesses bite the dust anyway
[...] Instead of aiming for 'end users', Linux desktops should aim at amateur developers [...]
Very good point. Though I think Windows' popularity stems from Microsoft's marketing, rather than its advantage to amateur developers, this is the thing that will attract amateur devels. To them, Linux has a "cool" rather a "complicated" image. In reality, however, Linux is far more complicate, primarily because it doesn't have a "clean singleminded" design and because good documentation is lacking.
What we need is a good development distro that includes stuff like Kylix, or a downsized Glade/CodeWarrior rather than StarOffice or WordPerfect.
What simple, yet powerful tools exist for Linux only?
Al Quaeda and cybercrime...
...Sure...
...I guess that when Bush were to decide to personally hijack a missile from Pakistan an to suicide crash it on top of that same country (or any other member of the evil triangle), Al Quaeda would respond forcefully by taking down some of "those American government websites that civilization depens on".
"Yeah, that'll teach 'em", Osama would say!
Let's keep focussed on desktop usage - all programmers with descent education know that Linux beats Windows.
> the "killer app" for me was "all of the above" windows gives me the buckwheats
To a desktop user, the killer app is probably wordprocessing, multimedia and games. Though these are all available on Linux, the do not have an added value (in terms of "ease of use", hardware support or "coolness"), but merely emulate what's available in Windows. And since - as you've mentioned - Apple has a pricetag, 90% of the users will stick with M$.
> With linux, I have a fleet of machines that cost me high end 125$ down to low end of 10$ that all run FAST, and I can multi task with them.
Let's suppose your figures are realistic. Isn't the problem that people expect to spend the same amount of money on a computer as they would on a TV set of videorecorder if they intend to use it as frequently. $500-$1000 is a "reasonable price" to many users; the problem is that at least $200 bucks thereof are MS's pure profit while the rest - the hardware - has a very slim margin.
> As to "lindows", I think it's silly.
So do I. But wine - or more generally - Windows interaction isn't silly.
I've had potential employers insist on "worddoc". for resume, I told them to GET STUFFED, I refuse, they get ascii.
Maybe that stuborn attitude works for you. Personally, I've never sent a Word formatted resume either and I used to rant about M$ product all the time. Still, I have never been able to convince my employers to stop developing software in Visual Studio - probably due to their "screw you, we insist on being stupid" mindset. But it's a fact that my ranting is futile, and I wish you luck in doing a better job at that.
Since Windows is a de facto standard and Linuxes - on the desktop - are outnumbered by far, doesn't it sound dubious to claim that "everybody is crazy and we're not"? Let's just assume modestly that there must be some advantages in MS's software that we - clueless - haven't jet discovered. And while waiting for that discovery, we should continue to extend Linux with features that give access to the real world where the big bucks are made.
Worst that can come of that is 1) geeks won't use these access features and others will stick with Windows 2) the Lindows beast will replace the Windows monster 3) Windows and Linux will coexist but won't be completely separated 4) the access features will ease the transition from Windows to Linux, not Lindows.
> People buy "crappy DVD players" that happen to have region free hacks because they're cheap, not because they're region free. 99% of the US market couldn't care less about non-region 1 DVDs.
;-).
You're probably right about the US, I don't know. You also have a good point since at least half of the (DVD) market is US centric.
On the other side of the atlantic ocean, however, "region free" is a *major* sales feature found in many advertisements. US citizens would care if they had to wait some extra months for many movies to become available. And to people regularly traveling to Japan, Signapore, Hongkong there's also the issue of market price.
A major point of difference wrt. copy protection in general however, is that the Palladium thing isn't primarily targetted agains copyright violation, but rather "secure" software distribution. Companies like Philips that expressly sell devices to copy CDs (or DVDs) gain from opposing conpy protection stuff, but in case of Palladium they're not a party.
However, the major obstacle on Microsoft's road to world domination are consumers. And if it's not MS's licensing that's going to turn against them, this may be it. Don't underestimate consumers' ability to judge both apples and oranges