If you walk into a store with cash on hand its quite easy to walk out with a huge discount beyond their regular 50% off sales.
Better yet, see if you can somebody to refer you to a diamond wholesaler. They save you a bundle, and the person who refered you will get a small kickback as a referer's fee. I got my diamond for wholesale, and because the jeweler recommended me, he ended up applying the referer's fee to the price of the ring. Result? The ring appraised the next day for almost double what I paid for it.
Its sometimes very difficult to fathom just how big the United States is, and how many different people live here. And its also hard to fathom that the general population of/. sits in a much higher caste than the average American. Its real easy for us to sit in an ivory tower and deride the rich, attack big companies, belittle the technology have-nots and laugh at the unintelligent. We all have 401(k) accounts, and we feel the sting of losing a couple of thousand dollars in the stock market because of some greedy CEO. And its real easy for us to extend that to the entire country, and assume that becuase the dot-com bubble burst, and the economy isn't doing as well as it used to, and your average HTML writer can't go out and get $100,000 that our country is doomed to failure.
The problem with that thinking is that there are lots more people out there without 401(k) accounts, and that didn't lose a single penny in the stock market, because they don't have any money to invest. They don't care about Microsoft, and they don't care about Enron, because neither of those companies have anything to do with them working two shifts and feeding their kids, or harvesting their crops. They're not calling for reform, because they haven't been wronged. What you call apathy is what they call ignoring things that are not important.
As for the downfall of American society - The downturn of an economy, and the corruption of CEOs and the back scratching of companies - these are not new concepts in US history. There is nothing new under the sun - just new generations, and new scams. Far greater evils have beset corporate America in the past 226 years, and if nothing else, the country has shown a tendancy for survival.
But when you've got your food on the table,and your surround sound stereo with the Simpsons Season 2 DVD playing at full blast, its nice to look out and have something to rally against. Because it is my belief that human beings are always at feeling their best when they are on the defensive - something hard wired into our instincts, I guess.
In this case, Microsoft was unethical and sneaky. And its good to cast a watchful eye toward the corporations lest they wrong us. But to rant and rave and call this the end of American society - well... if you were wronged then please do all you can to reform the system. But don't play the victim and blame all of society's ills on the lack of interest of the American public - its quite possible that they have more important things to worry about.
So, what possible use could the Nielsons have for this data, since it's precisely the demographic that ignores advertisers?
This is a great point - but the question was worded incorrectly.
The question is not what possible use the data could have, but rather what ramifications could collecting the data have? If the advertisers realize that a given show is very popular with TiVo watchers, then they *could* assume that their spots are not being watched.
Then one of two things could happen:
1) - the spots become more targeted (Can you imagine if more commercials for ThinkGeek style toys started appearing on television... mmmm...)
2) - The advertisers pull their money in favor of a less popular show amongst TiVo users.
Granted, this is a far fetched possibility (especially with popular programs like the Simpsons who obviously don't need geeks like us to get ratings), but could the TiVo data actually decide the fate of less popular shows (Junkyard Wars, Iron Chef or Adult Swim)?
First of all, QT/embedded is just as bloated as X (maybe even more).
The framebuffer is a good idea, but by the time you end up implementing all the stuff you need to actually run a decent program, you have implemented most of the XLib anyway. Trust me, I have gone that route before.
X has its advantages when used on networks, like the client/server model, but it's overkill for personal devices.
Ok - first of all - if you want to run multiple apps in a window manager environment, you *need* to run it as a client/server setup - Thats exactly what you are looking at on a window manager - multiple clients running on a single server. IMHO, its much better to have a client and server than a monolithic application - less resources to be used.
Secondly, X uses this same client/server configuration on the desktop - and though some take advantage of the networkability of the protocol, most don't. Yet, nobody ever attacks RedHat or SuSE for using X in a client/server configuration.
Ever hear of civil disobedience? It was illegal for a lot of things to happen, such as the Boston Tea party
Sure, but the Boston Tea Party was carried out by a group of citizens that by and large had the support of most of the citizens. The majority of US citizens don't understand (or care) about the proposed legislation, so they are unwilling to support the perpetrators of the DoS attack (and in reality. they are scared to death of terrorists and hackers, so they are much more willing to prosecute). This makes this event different than the other acts that you and others mentioned.
I won't speak for how history will bear this one out, but I suspect that if there was ever a case for showing the public what the RIAA wanted to do to them, this is as good a demonstration as any.
Unfortunately, this will only be used as a case where stupid crackers are threating to bring the nation down, and why they should be put in jail for the rest of their natural life. Sad, but true.
Fortunately, there are already a few popular types of civil disobedience against the RIAA and MPAA has been effective - here are two good ones:
1. DeCSS 2. P2P
If you want to oppose the MPAA and the RIAA (and frankly, who doesn't) - I urge you to redistribute DeCSS widely, and support your local P2P network - take your message to the people, and they will listen.
But don't sit in a dark basement and think that by setting off a few scripts that you are going to galvanize the public by doing what they are told to fear the most.
I am tired of the FUD. it's flying from both sides now and it is stupid.... STOP IT!
And you continue to spread the FUD - you were unable to make your point without mentioning Microsoft 18 times.
Here is the truth - sit 80% of the general population in front of a Linux desktop (KDE or Gnome, it doesn't matter) and ask them to do their daily work. Its very difficult, because bad things can happen, and usually do. A process might hang, or the printer might not be working, or the network goes down. For those of us who are Linux literate, its very easy to pop up a command line and fix the problem - but its as familiar as brain surgery to my fiance. Face it - the linux desktop is developed for geeks (because its geeks that wrote it). It just doesn't adapt to the other 80%.
And the other 80% is the group that decides if Linux is dead on the desktop, because they are the important market. It does not matter what your average geek thinks about some new electronic toy, it only matters what the average person on the street thinks.
linux cant die because it can't be killed... that's the great part of open source..
Linux != desktop. You've been living in Microsoft land too long.
But to end on an on topic note - I really like the looks of the Lycrois desktop - heres hoping that its as easy to use as it looks.
Because bits can't physically hurt or kill people.
Sure they can - what if the DoS affected a hospital network, or managed to disable a system responsbile for controlling a nuclear power plant, or a train, or the air traffic control system?
Sure you say, these critical systems are behind firewalls. But what if your DoS shuts down a key network while at the same time, a doctor in Seattle is trying to send urgent medical information to a doctor in Chicago who is trying to save a little kids life? That might sound a little melodramatic, but the fact of the matter is, the internet isn't all online auctions and porn.
You are using a standard response when any script kiddie was caught - "I wasn't doing any harm" - but the truth is you have no idea whose other electrons are buzzing around out there.
Gee, you need to use this "drm-approved" sound driver if you want our emulator to work. Sorry. Pretty soon they've taken over your allegedly free system in any way they please.
The important thing is that Microsoft would be entering this thing as a player on equal footing with other competitors. In the past, Microsoft has been a competitor, but has also been the ruling body for the competition itself. Products like WordPerfect would come in, and lose because Microsoft could change the underlying operating system to suit their whims.
Now, I understand that they can still rise to the top of the emulator market, because after all, only they have access to the secret APIs that even the WINE folks can only dream about. And I understand that they will do everything to try to switch the situation over to their favor.
But two important things still remain - if you choose not to buy into the Microsoft way of life, you can still use Linux, becuase while Microsoft can play games in their little corner of the Linux world, they still can't influence change in the kernel without giving it back to the community.
There is only one Windows, and it comes from a single point somewhere in Washington. You either use Windows from Microsoft or you don't use it at all. There are multiple Linux distros, so you are not forced to use the Microsoft approved (TM) distro if you don't want to (and I expect that if they play their usual games, then few people will want their distro, even if it means using a less compatible solution).
Just think how many places that use Linux will be willing to pay $50 for the ability to use Windows apps. Microsoft will make money, and increase market penetration w/out giving anything to the community.
Lemme ask you something.. What the hell is wrong with Microsoft, as a commercial corporation, writing an emulator layer for Linux? They're not going to be able to take over the kernel. They're not going to be able to force their opinions or policies on anyone who doesn't use their brand of emulation, and to tell you the truth (no offense to the WINE folks), I'll bet that they will write a pretty damn good emulator. The only thing evil and borgish thing that they might do is to modify their Windows software to only work on *their* emulator. And I bet if they knew how to prevent WINE from running Windows apps, they would probably have already done it.
There is a huge market for Windows apps, even amongst Linux geeks. It might be a game that only runs on Windows, or it might be an specialized app, or it might be solitare for all I care. The fact of the matter is that there was obviously a need for WINE / WinForLinux / VMWare.
As for not giving back to the community - well, there is a long list of folks who have taken from the community without giving back. Part of software freedom is the understanding that there will always be people who take and never give.
3) They want to Buy you. Not win you over, not get you to trust them, straight up, here's a free copy of XP, try it out. I've seen this at the chicago CIO conference, where it was brutally succesful.
Not to offend you, but your average CIO would be won over by one of those pens with a the lady whose clothes disappear when it is clicked. A CIO confrence is a long shot away from LinuxWorld.
And anyway, whats wrong with free copies of XP? Most hacker and porters I know end up needing a copy of Windows anway, and I would much rather receive a free copy than have to pay $100, know what I'm saying?
I live in Mexico. I have never heard before about the Alexis Patterson kidnapping. Yet when I watch CNN, there's a lot of stories about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. And I have to (somewhat painfully) agree with Jon Katz about this one.
Exactly - The Elizabeth Smart kiddnapping hit CNN within about 16 hours. The main players were on the Today show the next day. The Alexis Patterson story banging around the Milwaukee for a month or so until somebody picked it up nationally.
And lets dive in a little bit more:
Two months ago, in Salt Lake City, a little hispanic girl was kidnapped and her body was discovered about a month later in the river. Beyond a blurb on the news (that didn't even lead in the first 15 minutes), there was no mention. There were no flyers. Ironically, most people heard about it during the first days of the Smart case.
About a week ago, a little boy disappeared in the mountains outside of Salt Lake. While the search was still ongoing, the local news stations still lead with "breaking news" from the Smart case.
It's either that, or the Smarts have been paying afwully huge amounts of money to buy airtime in several media channels and newspapers and such.
Possibly - whatever the reason, the Smarts have the right amount of cash, they are the right color, and in Utah, they are the right religion.
Don't get me wrong, I feel horrible about the Smart girl - but I think that equal treatment should apply for all missing and exploited children, not just the ones that appeal to national TV.
Second, if you'll look through the rest of my post you'll see that if that happened that airline X and airline Y would both go bankrupt shortly thereafter because they're paying interest on huge loans to buy these new aircraft but aren't making any more money than they were before to pay off those loans.
They're already buying the planes anyway. Most airlines are continuously renewing their fleets at the tune of a couple of planes a year, either replacing old or unsafe planes (like the 747), or getting new planes as routes are added and removed.
You think laying out large amounts of cash for new fleets will somehow aleviate this problem?
Its not like they're going to replace their entire 747 / 767 / 777 fleet overnight - it takes time. The 777 has be available now for 5 years, and most of the US carriers have only 3 or 4 of them. It takes time to phase in new aircraft.
Either the airlines are going to factor the cost of buying the planes into the operating costs over the next X years
The money is already budgeted. Wouldn't you want them to buy the cheapest and most efficient aircraft they can?
And finally, how are they going to account for the price differences between flying the new planes and flying the old planes? Charging less for people to fly in the cool new planes would lead to all kinds of advertising and accounting problems.
The money that you pay for a flight doesn't nessesarly pay for that particular flight - the carrier handles it charges in a more general way (ie, per airport).. Its not important how much money they make per flight, but rather how much money they make over a given period of time. More effecient aircraft = less money / passenger = lower ticket prices.
and what type of plane you end up with will be luck of the draw.
Virtually all routes have a dedicated aircraft type.
Imagine that thing crashing into a building or city block. Or even just imagine that thing blowing up. Talk about putting all your eggs into one basket. Talk about the SUV of the sky. And you know that the seats are going to be cramped anyway.
Ahh, shit, thats right. Since it *can* explode and the seats may be cramped, lets forget about the cheaper flights and the more environmentally friendly engines, and go ahead and stick with our old version. Oh, wait, our *old* version can blow up too, and the seats are cramped. Damn, now what are we going to do?
If we need that kind of volume in airplanes, then passenger miles have come to the point where high speed trains make sense: on most routes, they are more economical, more comfortable, and more environmentally friendly
Yeah, nothing like a 15 hour cross country trip to calm your nerves. And those underwater trains that we can take to Europe sure are fun.
(2) The ammount of security holes alone found in Windows in a given week FAR, FAR outweighs those found in any other OS that I can think of.
Don't ever, ever think that any operating system has less bugs than the other. That is a dangerous belief that is going to reach up and grab you. All of these operating systems are written by human beings.
Microsoft wrote XP to a certain point (like Linux did with 2.4.0), and then released it. After that point, they would have to continiously send out updates to fix bugs and do updates. And everyone on/. bitchs that Microsoft was so insecure because there are so many patches.
However, in that same time frame, The 2.4 tree in linux has gone through 19 revisions, with many critical bug fixes! This proves that Linux has just as many bugs as Microsoft.
The difference is that Linux is open about their problems - and they make an effort to keep the public informed. If a critical problem is found, the code is changed (almost immediately). Microsoft hides their bugs. So for them to come out and announce bugs (and patches) before the bugs become newsworthy issues is a step in the right direction.
Skinner: All right, first academic alert: Wiggum, Ralph. Ralph: I won, I won! [walks on stage] Skinner: No no, Ralph, this means you're failing English. Ralph: Me fail English? That's unpossible!
Your best bet, get your superior on board no matter what you do, and get your a$$ covered on paper.
Either that, or keep a library of viruses that you can offload onto any machine at a moments notice, and then you can rightfully claim that you ghosted the machine to save the network. No office politics can stand up to the threat of a Outlook virus.
i'm gonna have to remember that line...good programmer/pro-creating humor is hard to come by..
Expect that particular joke has been used by every single co-worker of any Unix programmer that has overcome the odds and managed to have a child in the past 30 years.
But then you can add on jokes about how the new process has too high a priority, and how it will take you 18 years to apply the preempt patch. (But avoid the potentially dangerous clone() jokes).
Just don't forget - spawning the process is fun, the tough part is when the process actually starts running.
The problem is not the browser...but the ad. When will these people wake up? Did you catch that TWO of their few complains centered around use of ads, or features to stop ads? When you turn pop-ups off, it may disable some aspects of cnet.com (news.com?) that you really want to use. Hehe...yeah.
ZDNet also suffers from the ad reposition problem occassionally.
then I go a concert and get a 'program', that program has a lot of ads for sponsors. Especially 'programs' like Playbill magazine that you get at classical concerts, broadway shows, etc. Is there an implicit contract that says I will read those ads?
The important thing in all of these situations is ad exposure. Anyone who is buying advertising, anywhere, must hope that they will be exposed to enough people in order to offset the cost of the advertisment. The people selling the advertising space are hoping that they will get enough sales so that they can provide the product to the consumer at a lower cost (and hopefully increasing the number of consumers and increasing the amount of exposure...)
So when you buy Time magazine, you are being exposed to the advertisments, and in exchange, Time is providing you with a product at a lower cost. It really doesn't matter if you personally are personally attracted by the ads, because even a 1% success rate should be enough to pay for the cost of the ad (especially with a readership like Time).
The same thing happens with TV - you are given free television, in exchange for exposure to some number of advertisments. Once again, it doesn't matter if you get up and eat a snack during the commercial, because with a big enough viewership, even 1% success rate would enough additional revenue to make the ad pay.
So say that today, 40% of all people watching a given show end up watching at least 3 commercials during a 30 minute span (the others are off doing something else). So, say during a show lke ER (assuming 10 million viewers), that would be 4,000,000 people watching an ad, and assuming a 1% success rate, each ad would generate 40,000 sales (my numbers might be wrong, but I'm a geek, dammit, not a marketer).
So then, move forward 5 years, when (almost) everyone has a Tivo / ReplayTV unit. Now, the networks would be able to only assume a 10% watch rate during the commercials, which would only be 1,000,000 people. Still alot, but they are now only generating 10,000 sales per viewing. Now eventually, the number of people watching would drop low enough that advertising would become unprofitable, and free TV would cease to exist.
Thus the idiotic quotes from our friends at Fox. Will they see a decrease in advertising revenue? Yes. Is it stealing? No.
If they really cared, they would research new ways to generate revenue, instead it is much eaiser to bitch and complain to the government that technology is hurting them, than it is to attempt to generate new revenue models.
If you wish to fight the DMCA and the even more evil children of the DMCA, it is important to make a clear stand that we are against this because the law is wrong, not because it gets in the way of having our pirated content fix.
Bravo! That is one of the clearest and well thought out comments that I have ever seen on/.
Imagine: the buggy (and needless to say proprietary) flight control software is installed. Two months later, plane crashes are at an all time high. The FAA is in an uproar, the media is clamoring for a solution, America is in turmoil.
I'm just not seeing this happen. First of all, the old systems sucked just as bad, and they're keeping them around for backups. Secondly, the biggest danger here is mid-air collisions, and modern aircraft have at least good enough proximity alarms to avoid a problem. I would be more worried about smaller private craft than commercial airliners.
What's that? It's the phone. Who is it? Someone named Linux Torvalds...says he has a solution to our problems.
Wrong. This is serious life or death stuff. Even with real time extensions and a VM that doesn't change every 30 days, Linux is neither designed nor intended to handle high load real time situations. Open source software just simply isn't hardened enough to do anything approaching the complexity of a major air traffic control system.
Don't get me wrong - Linux is a good operating system, and its fun as hell to use and hack on, but a good engineer knows that there is a right tool for every job, and Linux just isn't a legimate choice for a high priority real time system like the ATC.
Slashdot Mirror
If you walk into a store with cash on hand its quite easy to walk out with a huge discount beyond their regular 50% off sales.
Better yet, see if you can somebody to refer you to a diamond wholesaler. They save you a bundle, and the person who refered you will get a small kickback as a referer's fee. I got my diamond for wholesale, and because the jeweler recommended me, he ended up applying the referer's fee to the price of the ring. Result? The ring appraised the next day for almost double what I paid for it.
Its sometimes very difficult to fathom just how big the United States is, and how many different people live here. And its also hard to fathom that the general population of /. sits in a much higher caste than the average American. Its real easy for us to sit in an ivory tower and deride the rich, attack big companies, belittle the technology have-nots and laugh at the unintelligent. We all have 401(k) accounts, and we feel the sting of losing a couple of thousand dollars in the stock market because of some greedy CEO. And its real easy for us to extend that to the entire country, and assume that becuase the dot-com bubble burst, and the economy isn't doing as well as it used to, and your average HTML writer can't go out and get $100,000 that our country is doomed to failure.
The problem with that thinking is that there are lots more people out there without 401(k) accounts, and that didn't lose a single penny in the stock market, because they don't have any money to invest. They don't care about Microsoft, and they don't care about Enron, because neither of those companies have anything to do with them working two shifts and feeding their kids, or harvesting their crops. They're not calling for reform, because they haven't been wronged. What you call apathy is what they call ignoring things that are not important.
As for the downfall of American society - The downturn of an economy, and the corruption of CEOs and the back scratching of companies - these are not new concepts in US history. There is nothing new under the sun - just new generations, and new scams. Far greater evils have beset corporate America in the past 226 years, and if nothing else, the country has shown a tendancy for survival.
But when you've got your food on the table,and your surround sound stereo with the Simpsons Season 2 DVD playing at full blast, its nice to look out and have something to rally against. Because it is my belief that human beings are always at feeling their best when they are on the defensive - something hard wired into our instincts, I guess.
In this case, Microsoft was unethical and sneaky. And its good to cast a watchful eye toward the corporations lest they wrong us. But to rant and rave and call this the end of American society - well... if you were wronged then please do all you can to reform the system. But don't play the victim and blame all of society's ills on the lack of interest of the American public - its quite possible that they have more important things to worry about.
So, what possible use could the Nielsons have for this data, since it's precisely the demographic that ignores advertisers?
This is a great point - but the question was worded incorrectly.
The question is not what possible use the data could have, but rather what ramifications could collecting the data have? If the advertisers realize that a given show is very popular with TiVo watchers, then they *could* assume that their spots are not being watched.
Then one of two things could happen:
1) - the spots become more targeted (Can you imagine if more commercials for ThinkGeek style toys started appearing on television... mmmm...)
2) - The advertisers pull their money in favor of a less popular show amongst TiVo users.
Granted, this is a far fetched possibility (especially with popular programs like the Simpsons who obviously don't need geeks like us to get ratings), but could the TiVo data actually decide the fate of less popular shows (Junkyard Wars, Iron Chef or Adult Swim)?
like using the framebuffer device, or Qt/embedded
First of all, QT/embedded is just as bloated as X (maybe even more).
The framebuffer is a good idea, but by the time you end up implementing all the stuff you need to actually run a decent program, you have implemented most of the XLib anyway. Trust me, I have gone that route before.
X has its advantages when used on networks, like the client/server model, but it's overkill for personal devices.
Ok - first of all - if you want to run multiple apps in a window manager environment, you *need* to run it as a client/server setup - Thats exactly what you are looking at on a window manager - multiple clients running on a single server. IMHO, its much better to have a client and server than a monolithic application - less resources to be used.
Secondly, X uses this same client/server configuration on the desktop - and though some take advantage of the networkability of the protocol, most don't. Yet, nobody ever attacks RedHat or SuSE for using X in a client/server configuration.
Ever hear of civil disobedience? It was illegal for a lot of things to happen, such as the Boston Tea party
Sure, but the Boston Tea Party was carried out by a group of citizens that by and large had the support of most of the citizens. The majority of US citizens don't understand (or care) about the proposed legislation, so they are unwilling to support the perpetrators of the DoS attack (and in reality. they are scared to death of terrorists and hackers, so they are much more willing to prosecute). This makes this event different than the other acts that you and others mentioned.
I won't speak for how history will bear this one out, but I suspect that if there was ever a case for showing the public what the RIAA wanted to do to them, this is as good a demonstration as any.
Unfortunately, this will only be used as a case where stupid crackers are threating to bring the nation down, and why they should be put in jail for the rest of their natural life. Sad, but true.
Fortunately, there are already a few popular types of civil disobedience against the RIAA and MPAA has been effective - here are two good ones:
1. DeCSS
2. P2P
If you want to oppose the MPAA and the RIAA (and frankly, who doesn't) - I urge you to redistribute DeCSS widely, and support your local P2P network - take your message to the people, and they will listen.
But don't sit in a dark basement and think that by setting off a few scripts that you are going to galvanize the public by doing what they are told to fear the most.
I am tired of the FUD. it's flying from both sides now and it is stupid.... STOP IT!
And you continue to spread the FUD - you were unable to make your point without mentioning Microsoft 18 times.
Here is the truth - sit 80% of the general population in front of a Linux desktop (KDE or Gnome, it doesn't matter) and ask them to do their daily work. Its very difficult, because bad things can happen, and usually do. A process might hang, or the printer might not be working, or the network goes down. For those of us who are Linux literate, its very easy to pop up a command line and fix the problem - but its as familiar as brain surgery to my fiance. Face it - the linux desktop is developed for geeks (because its geeks that wrote it). It just doesn't adapt to the other 80%.
And the other 80% is the group that decides if Linux is dead on the desktop, because they are the important market. It does not matter what your average geek thinks about some new electronic toy, it only matters what the average person on the street thinks.
linux cant die because it can't be killed... that's the great part of open source..
Linux != desktop. You've been living in Microsoft land too long.
But to end on an on topic note - I really like the looks of the Lycrois desktop - heres hoping that its as easy to use as it looks.
Because bits can't physically hurt or kill people.
Sure they can - what if the DoS affected a hospital network, or managed to disable a system responsbile for controlling a nuclear power plant, or a train, or the air traffic control system?
Sure you say, these critical systems are behind firewalls. But what if your DoS shuts down a key network while at the same time, a doctor in Seattle is trying to send urgent medical information to a doctor in Chicago who is trying to save a little kids life? That might sound a little melodramatic, but the fact of the matter is, the internet isn't all online auctions and porn.
You are using a standard response when any script kiddie was caught - "I wasn't doing any harm" - but the truth is you have no idea whose other electrons are buzzing around out there.
BTW "The Kid" happened to be the son of one of the main security geeks at the NSA
l
Yeah, the guy who invented the Unix password crypto scheme in the first place:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/crypt.htm
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
Gee, you need to use this "drm-approved" sound driver if you want our emulator to work. Sorry. Pretty soon they've taken over your allegedly free system in any way they please.
The important thing is that Microsoft would be entering this thing as a player on equal footing with other competitors. In the past, Microsoft has been a competitor, but has also been the ruling body for the competition itself. Products like WordPerfect would come in, and lose because Microsoft could change the underlying operating system to suit their whims.
Now, I understand that they can still rise to the top of the emulator market, because after all, only they have access to the secret APIs that even the WINE folks can only dream about. And I understand that they will do everything to try to switch the situation over to their favor.
But two important things still remain - if you choose not to buy into the Microsoft way of life, you can still use Linux, becuase while Microsoft can play games in their little corner of the Linux world, they still can't influence change in the kernel without giving it back to the community.
There is only one Windows, and it comes from a single point somewhere in Washington. You either use Windows from Microsoft or you don't use it at all. There are multiple Linux distros, so you are not forced to use the Microsoft approved (TM) distro if you don't want to (and I expect that if they play their usual games, then few people will want their distro, even if it means using a less compatible solution).
Just think how many places that use Linux will be willing to pay $50 for the ability to use Windows apps. Microsoft will make money, and increase market penetration w/out giving anything to the community.
Lemme ask you something.. What the hell is wrong with Microsoft, as a commercial corporation, writing an emulator layer for Linux? They're not going to be able to take over the kernel. They're not going to be able to force their opinions or policies on anyone who doesn't use their brand of emulation, and to tell you the truth (no offense to the WINE folks), I'll bet that they will write a pretty damn good emulator. The only thing evil and borgish thing that they might do is to modify their Windows software to only work on *their* emulator. And I bet if they knew how to prevent WINE from running Windows apps, they would probably have already done it.
There is a huge market for Windows apps, even amongst Linux geeks. It might be a game that only runs on Windows, or it might be an specialized app, or it might be solitare for all I care. The fact of the matter is that there was obviously a need for WINE / WinForLinux / VMWare.
As for not giving back to the community - well, there is a long list of folks who have taken from the community without giving back. Part of software freedom is the understanding that there will always be people who take and never give.
3) They want to Buy you. Not win you over, not get you to trust them, straight up, here's a free copy of XP, try it out. I've seen this at the chicago CIO conference, where it was brutally succesful.
Not to offend you, but your average CIO would be won over by one of those pens with a the lady whose clothes disappear when it is clicked. A CIO confrence is a long shot away from LinuxWorld.
And anyway, whats wrong with free copies of XP? Most hacker and porters I know end up needing a copy of Windows anway, and I would much rather receive a free copy than have to pay $100, know what I'm saying?
I live in Mexico. I have never heard before about the Alexis Patterson kidnapping. Yet when I watch CNN, there's a lot of stories about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. And I have to (somewhat painfully) agree with Jon Katz about this one.
Exactly - The Elizabeth Smart kiddnapping hit CNN within about 16 hours. The main players were on the Today show the next day. The Alexis Patterson story banging around the Milwaukee for a month or so until somebody picked it up nationally.
And lets dive in a little bit more:
Two months ago, in Salt Lake City, a little hispanic girl was kidnapped and her body was discovered about a month later in the river. Beyond a blurb on the news (that didn't even lead in the first 15 minutes), there was no mention. There were no flyers. Ironically, most people heard about it during the first days of the Smart case.
About a week ago, a little boy disappeared in the mountains outside of Salt Lake. While the search was still ongoing, the local news stations still lead with "breaking news" from the Smart case.
It's either that, or the Smarts have been paying afwully huge amounts of money to buy airtime in several media channels and newspapers and such.
Possibly - whatever the reason, the Smarts have the right amount of cash, they are the right color, and in Utah, they are the right religion.
Don't get me wrong, I feel horrible about the Smart girl - but I think that equal treatment should apply for all missing and exploited children, not just the ones that appeal to national TV.
Second, if you'll look through the rest of my post you'll see that if that happened that airline X and airline Y would both go bankrupt shortly thereafter because they're paying interest on huge loans to buy these new aircraft but aren't making any more money than they were before to pay off those loans.
They're already buying the planes anyway. Most airlines are continuously renewing their fleets at the tune of a couple of planes a year, either replacing old or unsafe planes (like the 747), or getting new planes as routes are added and removed.
You think laying out large amounts of cash for new fleets will somehow aleviate this problem?
Its not like they're going to replace their entire 747 / 767 / 777 fleet overnight - it takes time. The 777 has be available now for 5 years, and most of the US carriers have only 3 or 4 of them. It takes time to phase in new aircraft.
Either the airlines are going to factor the cost of buying the planes into the operating costs over the next X years
The money is already budgeted. Wouldn't you want them to buy the cheapest and most efficient aircraft they can?
And finally, how are they going to account for the price differences between flying the new planes and flying the old planes? Charging less for people to fly in the cool new planes would lead to all kinds of advertising and accounting problems.
The money that you pay for a flight doesn't nessesarly pay for that particular flight - the carrier handles it charges in a more general way (ie, per airport).. Its not important how much money they make per flight, but rather how much money they make over a given period of time. More effecient aircraft = less money / passenger = lower ticket prices.
and what type of plane you end up with will be luck of the draw.
Virtually all routes have a dedicated aircraft type.
Imagine that thing crashing into a building or city block. Or even just imagine that thing blowing up. Talk about putting all your eggs into one basket. Talk about the SUV of the sky. And you know that the seats are going to be cramped anyway.
Ahh, shit, thats right. Since it *can* explode and the seats may be cramped, lets forget about the cheaper flights and the more environmentally friendly engines, and go ahead and stick with our old version. Oh, wait, our *old* version can blow up too, and the seats are cramped. Damn, now what are we going to do?
If we need that kind of volume in airplanes, then passenger miles have come to the point where high speed trains make sense: on most routes, they are more economical, more comfortable, and more environmentally friendly
Yeah, nothing like a 15 hour cross country trip to calm your nerves. And those underwater trains that we can take to Europe sure are fun.
(2) The ammount of security holes alone found in Windows in a given week FAR, FAR outweighs those found in any other OS that I can think of.
/. bitchs that Microsoft was so insecure because there are so many patches.
Don't ever, ever think that any operating system has less bugs than the other. That is a dangerous belief that is going to reach up and grab you. All of these operating systems are written by human beings.
Microsoft wrote XP to a certain point (like Linux did with 2.4.0), and then released it. After that point, they would have to continiously send out updates to fix bugs and do updates. And everyone on
However, in that same time frame, The 2.4 tree in linux has gone through 19 revisions, with many critical bug fixes! This proves that Linux has just as many bugs as Microsoft.
The difference is that Linux is open about their problems - and they make an effort to keep the public informed. If a critical problem is found, the code is changed (almost immediately).
Microsoft hides their bugs. So for them to come out and announce bugs (and patches) before the bugs become newsworthy issues is a step in the right direction.
Bart said that.
Wrong. (from The Simpsons Archive):
Skinner: All right, first academic alert: Wiggum, Ralph.
Ralph: I won, I won! [walks on stage]
Skinner: No no, Ralph, this means you're failing English.
Ralph: Me fail English? That's unpossible!
Your best bet, get your superior on board no matter what you do, and get your a$$ covered on paper.
Either that, or keep a library of viruses that you can offload onto any machine at a moments notice, and then you can rightfully claim that you ghosted the machine to save the network. No office politics can stand up to the threat of a Outlook virus.
i'm gonna have to remember that line...good programmer/pro-creating humor is hard to come by..
Expect that particular joke has been used by every single co-worker of any Unix programmer that has overcome the odds and managed to have a child in the past 30 years.
But then you can add on jokes about how the new process has too high a priority, and how it will take you 18 years to apply the preempt patch. (But avoid the potentially dangerous clone() jokes).
Just don't forget - spawning the process is fun, the tough part is when the process actually starts running.
Uh-oh - better tell CNN. The think that Amazon turned a profit
/.ers respect companies that make alot of money?
And since when do
ZDNet also suffers from the ad reposition problem occassionally.
Meanwhile, I suffer from brain damage all the time.
Sigh - I meant CNET.....
The problem is not the browser...but the ad. When will these people wake up? Did you catch that TWO of their few complains centered around use of ads, or features to stop ads? When you turn pop-ups off, it may disable some aspects of cnet.com (news.com?) that you really want to use. Hehe...yeah.
ZDNet also suffers from the ad reposition problem occassionally.
then I go a concert and get a 'program', that program has a lot of ads for sponsors. Especially 'programs' like Playbill magazine that you get at classical concerts, broadway shows, etc. Is there an implicit contract that says I will read those ads?
The important thing in all of these situations is ad exposure. Anyone who is buying advertising, anywhere, must hope that they will be exposed to enough people in order to offset the cost of the advertisment. The people selling the advertising space are hoping that they will get enough sales so that they can provide the product to the consumer at a lower cost (and hopefully increasing the number of consumers and increasing the amount of exposure...)
So when you buy Time magazine, you are being exposed to the advertisments, and in exchange, Time is providing you with a product at a lower cost. It really doesn't matter if you personally are personally attracted by the ads, because even a 1% success rate should be enough to pay for the cost of the ad (especially with a readership like Time).
The same thing happens with TV - you are given free television, in exchange for exposure to some number of advertisments. Once again, it doesn't matter if you get up and eat a snack during the commercial, because with a big enough viewership, even 1% success rate would enough additional revenue to make the ad pay.
So say that today, 40% of all people watching a given show end up watching at least 3 commercials during a 30 minute span (the others are off doing something else). So, say during a show lke ER (assuming 10 million viewers), that would be 4,000,000 people watching an ad, and assuming a 1% success rate, each ad would generate 40,000 sales (my numbers might be wrong, but I'm a geek, dammit, not a marketer).
So then, move forward 5 years, when (almost) everyone has a Tivo / ReplayTV unit. Now, the networks would be able to only assume a 10% watch rate during the commercials, which would only be 1,000,000 people. Still alot, but they are now only generating 10,000 sales per viewing. Now eventually, the number of people watching would drop low enough that advertising would become unprofitable, and free TV would cease to exist.
Thus the idiotic quotes from our friends at Fox. Will they see a decrease in advertising revenue? Yes. Is it stealing? No.
If they really cared, they would research new ways to generate revenue, instead it is much eaiser to bitch and complain to the government that technology is hurting them, than it is to attempt to generate new revenue models.
If you wish to fight the DMCA and the even more evil children of the DMCA, it is important to make a clear stand that we are against this because the law is wrong, not because it gets in the way of having our pirated content fix.
/.
Bravo! That is one of the clearest and well thought out comments that I have ever seen on
Such a troll....
Imagine: the buggy (and needless to say proprietary) flight control software is installed. Two months later, plane crashes are at an all time high. The FAA is in an uproar, the media is clamoring for a solution, America is in turmoil.
I'm just not seeing this happen. First of all, the old systems sucked just as bad, and they're keeping them around for backups. Secondly, the biggest danger here is mid-air collisions, and modern aircraft have at least good enough proximity alarms to avoid a problem. I would be more worried about smaller private craft than commercial airliners.
What's that? It's the phone. Who is it? Someone named Linux Torvalds...says he has a solution to our problems.
Wrong. This is serious life or death stuff. Even with real time extensions and a VM that doesn't change every 30 days, Linux is neither designed nor intended to handle high load real time situations. Open source software just simply isn't hardened enough to do anything approaching the complexity of a major air traffic control system.
Don't get me wrong - Linux is a good operating system, and its fun as hell to use and hack on, but a good engineer knows that there is a right tool for every job, and Linux just isn't a legimate choice for a high priority real time system like the ATC.
At the risk of sounding like an insensitive racist jerk, what, exactly, has the US contributed positively to the net?
Uhhh... other than inventing the damn thing?