My first thought was the same as yours, why not use the ".snapshot" prefix from netapp, so that scriopts and tools written for Netapp servers will continue to work.
Second, I have hundreds of mail folders saved in files with names like "user@example.com". Oops.
Block-level copy on write is unlikely to buy you anything in practical use.
For binary files (eg, databases) it will. And it's pretty cheap to implement... for a whole-file write operation where the file is first truncated the cost is the same as if they didn't bother to COW, and it keeps lots of complete copies of log files from being created.
You're not in a third-world country where a cellphone is the cheap way (and often the only way) of getting phone service, and where it's not unknown for several families or a whole village to band together to pay for one cellphone as a result.
But if you only have $X to spend on licensing (enough for 2 licenses), which 2 of the 3 formats would you license right now?
Even if this followed logically (which I'm not sure it does) you're not changing the situation any... it's still not Apple's decision not to license Fairplay that's keeping people "locked in" to the iPod by their music collection.
But it's still strange that apart from *one* Sony player (an old one), not one manufacturer has decided to go after current iPod owners. I mean, your choice is a format that the biggest company in the business is using, one you've *said* is being unfair by using that format, and one who even with the license fees you'd STILL be able to undercut by 30% without breaking a sweat... or a format that *their* competition was using but who has just decided to abandon it and leave you in the lurch.
AAC is MPEG-4 Audio. It's MPEG's successor to MP3. The license fee is about the same as for MP3 (it's even a penny cheaper for more than 400,000 units a year), and there's no additional distribution royalty for MP4.
But where is the business case for supporting AAC
There's two:
1. You can put more music on the player than MP3 at the same quality, so you can say "1000 songs" instead of "750 songs" on the box. Now, WMA has the same effect, but how much of the market does WMA get you and how much does AAC get you? Well... that brings us to...
2. Selling your player to people who currently own an iPod. The typical iPod owner only gets a small fraction of his music from iTunes, but almost all of them will have ripped their CDs in AAC rather than MP3: not only is it a better format, but don't forget the power of the default. AAC is the default in iTunes.
And remember the context here. People are getting upset at Apple because their proprietary DRM gives them a supposed "lock in" on the music player market. But not only is most of that "lock in" self-inflicted, but now Apple is giving up the "lock in" on the rest!
Look, I don't even *like* the iPod. I had one, I gave it to my daughter, the "click wheel" is just too annoying for me. I'd happily pay Creative or whoever an extra couple of bucks for a player that supports AAC as well. But the only one that did was a Sony... and an old and overpriced one at that.
So when someone writes (as the original poster I responded to did) that Apple is still "locking people in" with their format, it boggles my mind. The RIAA and Microsoft and Creative and the rest really have the market hornswoggled with this imaginary "lock in" the iPod has.
I used to have a site reviewing free web page hosting, back in the '90s when that was a relatively new idea. I had a form where people could suggest sites, and every weekend or so I'd go check them out, try setting up a sample page, and add the results to the list.
All of a sudden, over a period of a couple of months or so, the "request" page started getting flooded with suggestions for "new" free web hosting sites that seemed awfully similar, and offers to exchange links, and what in retrospect were obviously the work of the kinds of parasites that Google's been fighting. Pretty soon maintaining the page wasn't fun any more, and I quit updating it and eventually took it down.
Given that Google has to automate this process, I think they're doing a pretty good job.
So, essentially the gripe is that when MS does open up their source, it's either intuitively (or by license) restricted to development for Windows?
Of course.
I'm not sure what platforms you expect them to encourage or allow development on.
I don't expect them to encourage development on anything but Windows [1]. That's not the point of my message.
You asked why people weren't responding positively to microsoft "finally" open-sourcing something. You seemed to honestly believe that simply because something is open-source it should be perceived as "good". Not all open source software is good, no matter what you think of as "good". Some of it is just plain bad code. Some is obsolete, insecure, or actively discourages healthy competition. Even open source software from people generally considered "good" can have poison pills in it: for many years Stallman promoted GCC-specific extensions to C to encourage lock-in to GCC. That episode is long behind us, thankfully, and many of these extensions (like the shorthand "a ?: b" for "a ? a : b") are being deprecated and removed, but the point is that just because something is "open source" that doesn't automatically make it "good".
So, given that, why do you expect people to be enthusiastic about open source projects they can't use, and that don't actually provide the benefits they're looking for from open source software?
[1] Though it would be nice to see them open-source Interix.
Microsoft has been using open source for some time, albeit sometimes with restrictive licenses, but rarely has any of it been useful for anything but developers already committed to Microsoft's platform.
There are several reasons people may be interested in open source, but they all have one thing in common... people are interested in what open source does for them. Open source frees them from dependence on a single vendor, it frees them from license fees and royalties, it allows them to share responsibility with a large pool of like-minded developers, and so on. Open source products tied to a single vendor, whether it's hardware (like a Linux-based set-top box or PDA) or software (one of Microsof's efforts was an open-source installer for Windows applications) is only going to be interesting if it's useful for the things they're already doing.
Open-sourcing *part* of a product, when you're potentially going to have to pay Microsoft to use the rest (the price I read was the first million users free, then 25 cents per user after that), is a pretty obvious poison pill.
The deception is that if Apple really cared about the consumers then they would open iTunes/iStore to work with other players.
They have. DRM-free music from iTunes will play on any player that supports MPEG-4 audio. That's all Apple's "AAC" is, it's an open standard and one that's used by a number of serious musicians like Elena Kuschnerova for their online distribution. Apple didn't invent it, they selected it because it's superior to MP3, and any company making a music player ought to have done the same.
Recently I went to Frys to try and find a player that supported MPEG-4 audio (under any name, MP4, MPEG-4 Audio, or AAC) and found precisely one non-Apple player that supported it. More importantly, I only found one other player that supported ANYTHING but MP3 and Windows Media.
So it's not Apple that's keeping you from listening to your iTMS music without converting it. I don't know whether Microsoft's been cutting restrictive licensing deals with the people who make the players, or whether they're just stupid, but it seems to me that it's hard to take a company complaining about not being able to license Apple's format seriously when it's not actually something they have to license from Apple in the first place!
Um, no, what makes you say that? Don't forget Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign... why on earth do you think they'd do anything to make the music you've already ripped stop playing. For that matter HOW on earth do you think they'd do that?
If you don't care for the service, they're happy to sell you more iPods to play ripped music on... whether you're running Linux on them or not.
Back in the '80s and early '90s, Open Systems were the latest good idea the marketing people noticed, and they embraced open systems aggressively... but not by actually opening up their interfaces and protocols, no, what they did was far more radical.
They changed the name of their products!
So you had "MVS OpenEdition" from IBM, and "OpenVMS" from DEC.
This is just more of the same. It has nothing to do with Open Source (still a good idea) or Open Systems (still a good idea) or anything else of substance. It's just the marketing trick of the month. They'll get started on something else next... maybe they'll pick up on silly names for software releases and we'll see Lotus Notes Happy Hippo, or Windows Effusive Samovar.
Your typical universal laptop adapter is at least 70 watts: quick googling gets me Targus adapters at 70, 75, 90, and 120W. The power supply on my Macbook is 85W, and the old iBook PS was 65W.
The mistake was calling in the DEP in the first place.
EPA says "If a CFL breaks in your home, open nearby windows to disperse any vapor that may escape, carefully sweep up the fragments (do not use your hands) and wipe the area with a disposable paper towel to remove all glass fragments. Do not use a vacuum. Place all fragments in a sealed plastic bag and follow disposal instructions above."
I wonder if she has a thermostat in the house, with a mercury tilt switch? How about a digital (or quartz) watch, or any other device containing batteries containing mercury? Maybe a crib monitor?
Every now and then I've had an alkaline or nicad battery burst and release fumes. Should I have called the EPA and got a cleanup? Should I quit using battery-powered devices?
The first point is interesting, reading in part...
Until expressed as a com- puter-readable "copy," e.g., on a CD-ROM, Windows--indeed any software detached from an activating medium--remains uncom- binable. It cannot be inserted into a CD-ROM drive or downloaded from the Internet; it cannot be installed or executed on a computer. Abstract software code is an idea without physical embodiment, and as such, it does not match 271(f)'s categorization: "components" amenable to "combination." Windows abstracted from a tangible copy no doubt is information--a detailed set of instructions--and thus might be compared to a blueprint (or anything else containing design information). A blueprint may contain precise instructions for the construction and combination of the components of a patented device, but it is not itself a combinable component. What exactly is this "Windows in the abstract" separate from "a copy of Windows"? Do they mean that if I copy a software program that incorporates a patented invention, until that copy is converted into a deliverable form it's actually not an implementation of the patented invention. So, for example, software distributed as source code can't violate a patent until it's compiled?
Microsoft may have laid up a whole heap of trouble for themselves here.
Data point: India also has a huge population, but another mass market company (Ikea) has estimated that the total potential customer base for their products in India is no more than five digits.
There's plenty of Google services that could be rolled out into China.
That's completely unrelated to my comment. They can do that whether or not the servers are hosted in China, or whether they do any censorship beyond what the Chinese government explicitly requires by law, or whether they explicitly inform people when information is being blocked.
I don't think Google would be giving up as much as you think... hosting *anything* in China is a self-defeating policy for a software company, and this proposal doesn't keep them from censoring material: it just keeps them from doing it secretly. Simply telling people that they've had search results blocked is a competitive advantage.
This is more like a shareholder resolution that GM make some currently optional safety equipment standard. Which, history shows, would be good business sense.
I'd like to thank all the folks at ISPs who've responded here.
I long since gave up reporting spammers, even ones who appeared to have a legitimate product (or one that would be legitimate if it wasn't spammed for), because the volume is just too high. I can't even afford the bandwidth to accept mail that's potentially spam: I drop connections from dialup addresses at HELO, and I have several countries blacklisted at that level.
The only spam I report any more is stuff that gets through my filters, doesn't seem to be sent from a botnet, *and* the product is something I'm potentially interested in. I won't buy from the spammer, and I take the effort to report them in an attempt to reduce the chance that the spammer will get a competitive advantage over legitimate businesses that I really care about. This may happen a couple of times a month, so it's not a great burden... and I wish I could do it more often.
I'm glad to hear that this might still have some impact.
"It can be hard to custom-configure notebook computers".
Maybe that's the problem?
Make the notebooks easier to work on with fewer unique modules across the product line.
IBM was doing very well with that approach for a while, swapping out a hard drive in a Thinkpad T23 is a matter of unscrewing one big easy thumbscrew and pulling out a sled... the only tool you needed was a coin... and to change the RAM it didn't even take that much. Hell, I'd rather upgrade the RAM in a Thinkpad T-series than in a lot of the Dell *desktops* I've worked on.
So extend that a little... come up with a standard form factor for compact internal add-on cards, and make them easy to get to, and it'll be just as easy to custom-configure notebooks as desktops.
That's how you need to read a headline like that. Some random company, no matter how large, switching some services (I doubt they're switching everything, I doubt they even know what everything they're running on Linux is) from one version of UNIX to another shouldn't be a big deal. Whether it's switching from Solaris to AIX, Solaris to Linux, Solaris to FreeBSD, AIX to Linux, SCO to FreeBSD, HPUX to AIX, SCO to OSX, HPUX to Linux, or Linux to AIX.
The whole POINT to open systems is that you CAN make these kinds of changes without them being disruptive. Nobody should be surprised by them.
There are dozens of other small PCs that can do what the AppleTV or Neuros hardware can do, and which can run open source software, and are above all cheaper than either. People whose goal is running open source software above all else aren't generally going to be "Apple TV hackers", but for the ones who are... what is it that Neuros offers them? One thing that hardcore open source people are worried about is finding themselves locked in to a single source. Who else is making embedded set-top boxes with a dual-core ARM9 processors they can go to if Neuros goes casters-up?
It ain't just the summary, the article itself is misleading.
First off, the Greenpeace attack on Apple is acknowledged as being a sham. They even backed down on it at one point.
Second, Windows XP has the gaming performance edge, not Vista. Vista has less performance than Windows XP almost across the board, and Vista compatibility problems with hardware and games are rampant right now... AND there's a good many boards (not all of them old ones) that are never expected to have drivers updated for Vista.
If they're going to throw the match by comparing OS X against an older version of Windows, why didn't they throw in complaints about Mac OS 9 as well?
Why, friend, I do not disagree with you, and neither as it happens does Steve Jobs. The DRM in the iTunes store is neither at the instigation of Apple, nor is it a permanent part of the product. Now that the ice has been broken with the EMI deal, Jobs is hoping to get half the music in the uTunes store DRM-free by the end of the year and Apple is actively contacting independants.
But the person I was responding to was arguing in favor of DRM-protected subscription services, so that's what my response was in regards to. I realise that it's popular to take potshots at messages or even parts of messages out of context, but it's really not terribly useful unless you're dealing with people who have problems with long-term memory.
For example:
Non-Apple fanboi != Microsoft fanboi
Since Windows is the only platform Rhapsody runs on, and Real uses Microsoft's inherently insecure HTML control to display what I believe Microsoft is pleased to call "rich content", then it shouldn't be difficult to make the connection that someone who is recommending the use of Rhapsody to avoid the possibility of malware riding on bugs in the Quicktime encapsulation code is, perhaps, not thinking things through. One doesn't have to be any kind of "fanboi" to connect the dots.
There's ONE hole in a CD, and that's the one that sits on the spindle.
Since you apparently don't use Windows, I suspect that's probably true for you, but the original poster would be well advised to beware of CDs that attempt to install backdoors in the OS when mounted.
Slashdot Mirror
My first thought was the same as yours, why not use the ".snapshot" prefix from netapp, so that scriopts and tools written for Netapp servers will continue to work.
Second, I have hundreds of mail folders saved in files with names like "user@example.com". Oops.
Block-level copy on write is unlikely to buy you anything in practical use.
For binary files (eg, databases) it will. And it's pretty cheap to implement... for a whole-file write operation where the file is first truncated the cost is the same as if they didn't bother to COW, and it keeps lots of complete copies of log files from being created.
You're not in a third-world country where a cellphone is the cheap way (and often the only way) of getting phone service, and where it's not unknown for several families or a whole village to band together to pay for one cellphone as a result.
But if you only have $X to spend on licensing (enough for 2 licenses), which 2 of the 3 formats would you license right now?
Even if this followed logically (which I'm not sure it does) you're not changing the situation any... it's still not Apple's decision not to license Fairplay that's keeping people "locked in" to the iPod by their music collection.
But it's still strange that apart from *one* Sony player (an old one), not one manufacturer has decided to go after current iPod owners. I mean, your choice is a format that the biggest company in the business is using, one you've *said* is being unfair by using that format, and one who even with the license fees you'd STILL be able to undercut by 30% without breaking a sweat... or a format that *their* competition was using but who has just decided to abandon it and leave you in the lurch.
They are an indicator that there's money available for other things than the bare necessities even in the "third world".
Um, what makes you thnk cellphones aren't necessities?
Probably due to licensing costs for AAC?
AAC is MPEG-4 Audio. It's MPEG's successor to MP3. The license fee is about the same as for MP3 (it's even a penny cheaper for more than 400,000 units a year), and there's no additional distribution royalty for MP4.
But where is the business case for supporting AAC
There's two:
1. You can put more music on the player than MP3 at the same quality, so you can say "1000 songs" instead of "750 songs" on the box. Now, WMA has the same effect, but how much of the market does WMA get you and how much does AAC get you? Well... that brings us to...
2. Selling your player to people who currently own an iPod. The typical iPod owner only gets a small fraction of his music from iTunes, but almost all of them will have ripped their CDs in AAC rather than MP3: not only is it a better format, but don't forget the power of the default. AAC is the default in iTunes.
And remember the context here. People are getting upset at Apple because their proprietary DRM gives them a supposed "lock in" on the music player market. But not only is most of that "lock in" self-inflicted, but now Apple is giving up the "lock in" on the rest!
Look, I don't even *like* the iPod. I had one, I gave it to my daughter, the "click wheel" is just too annoying for me. I'd happily pay Creative or whoever an extra couple of bucks for a player that supports AAC as well. But the only one that did was a Sony... and an old and overpriced one at that.
So when someone writes (as the original poster I responded to did) that Apple is still "locking people in" with their format, it boggles my mind. The RIAA and Microsoft and Creative and the rest really have the market hornswoggled with this imaginary "lock in" the iPod has.
I used to have a site reviewing free web page hosting, back in the '90s when that was a relatively new idea. I had a form where people could suggest sites, and every weekend or so I'd go check them out, try setting up a sample page, and add the results to the list.
All of a sudden, over a period of a couple of months or so, the "request" page started getting flooded with suggestions for "new" free web hosting sites that seemed awfully similar, and offers to exchange links, and what in retrospect were obviously the work of the kinds of parasites that Google's been fighting. Pretty soon maintaining the page wasn't fun any more, and I quit updating it and eventually took it down.
Given that Google has to automate this process, I think they're doing a pretty good job.
So, essentially the gripe is that when MS does open up their source, it's either intuitively (or by license) restricted to development for Windows?
Of course.
I'm not sure what platforms you expect them to encourage or allow development on.
I don't expect them to encourage development on anything but Windows [1]. That's not the point of my message.
You asked why people weren't responding positively to microsoft "finally" open-sourcing something. You seemed to honestly believe that simply because something is open-source it should be perceived as "good". Not all open source software is good, no matter what you think of as "good". Some of it is just plain bad code. Some is obsolete, insecure, or actively discourages healthy competition. Even open source software from people generally considered "good" can have poison pills in it: for many years Stallman promoted GCC-specific extensions to C to encourage lock-in to GCC. That episode is long behind us, thankfully, and many of these extensions (like the shorthand "a ?: b" for "a ? a : b") are being deprecated and removed, but the point is that just because something is "open source" that doesn't automatically make it "good".
So, given that, why do you expect people to be enthusiastic about open source projects they can't use, and that don't actually provide the benefits they're looking for from open source software?
[1] Though it would be nice to see them open-source Interix.
Microsoft has been using open source for some time, albeit sometimes with restrictive licenses, but rarely has any of it been useful for anything but developers already committed to Microsoft's platform.
... people are interested in what open source does for them. Open source frees them from dependence on a single vendor, it frees them from license fees and royalties, it allows them to share responsibility with a large pool of like-minded developers, and so on. Open source products tied to a single vendor, whether it's hardware (like a Linux-based set-top box or PDA) or software (one of Microsof's efforts was an open-source installer for Windows applications) is only going to be interesting if it's useful for the things they're already doing.
There are several reasons people may be interested in open source, but they all have one thing in common
Open-sourcing *part* of a product, when you're potentially going to have to pay Microsoft to use the rest (the price I read was the first million users free, then 25 cents per user after that), is a pretty obvious poison pill.
The point is that there is a huge market and demand for such gadgets.
Yes, so what? We're talking about Google here... not Samsung, Motorola, or Nokia.
The deception is that if Apple really cared about the consumers then they would open iTunes/iStore to work with other players.
They have. DRM-free music from iTunes will play on any player that supports MPEG-4 audio. That's all Apple's "AAC" is, it's an open standard and one that's used by a number of serious musicians like Elena Kuschnerova for their online distribution. Apple didn't invent it, they selected it because it's superior to MP3, and any company making a music player ought to have done the same.
Recently I went to Frys to try and find a player that supported MPEG-4 audio (under any name, MP4, MPEG-4 Audio, or AAC) and found precisely one non-Apple player that supported it. More importantly, I only found one other player that supported ANYTHING but MP3 and Windows Media.
So it's not Apple that's keeping you from listening to your iTMS music without converting it. I don't know whether Microsoft's been cutting restrictive licensing deals with the people who make the players, or whether they're just stupid, but it seems to me that it's hard to take a company complaining about not being able to license Apple's format seriously when it's not actually something they have to license from Apple in the first place!
they want me to buy it all over AGAIN???
Um, no, what makes you say that? Don't forget Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign... why on earth do you think they'd do anything to make the music you've already ripped stop playing. For that matter HOW on earth do you think they'd do that?
If you don't care for the service, they're happy to sell you more iPods to play ripped music on... whether you're running Linux on them or not.
Back in the '80s and early '90s, Open Systems were the latest good idea the marketing people noticed, and they embraced open systems aggressively... but not by actually opening up their interfaces and protocols, no, what they did was far more radical.
They changed the name of their products!
So you had "MVS OpenEdition" from IBM, and "OpenVMS" from DEC.
This is just more of the same. It has nothing to do with Open Source (still a good idea) or Open Systems (still a good idea) or anything else of substance. It's just the marketing trick of the month. They'll get started on something else next... maybe they'll pick up on silly names for software releases and we'll see Lotus Notes Happy Hippo, or Windows Effusive Samovar.
Your typical universal laptop adapter is at least 70 watts: quick googling gets me Targus adapters at 70, 75, 90, and 120W. The power supply on my Macbook is 85W, and the old iBook PS was 65W.
The mistake was calling in the DEP in the first place.
EPA says "If a CFL breaks in your home, open nearby windows to disperse any vapor that may escape, carefully sweep up the fragments (do not use your hands) and wipe the area with a disposable paper towel to remove all glass fragments. Do not use a vacuum. Place all fragments in a sealed plastic bag and follow disposal instructions above."
I wonder if she has a thermostat in the house, with a mercury tilt switch? How about a digital (or quartz) watch, or any other device containing batteries containing mercury? Maybe a crib monitor?
Every now and then I've had an alkaline or nicad battery burst and release fumes. Should I have called the EPA and got a cleanup? Should I quit using battery-powered devices?
Data point: there are 150 million mobile phone users in India.
In the third world, mobile phones are the *cheap* way to get telephone service.
puter-readable "copy," e.g., on a CD-ROM, Windows--indeed any
software detached from an activating medium--remains uncom-
binable. It cannot be inserted into a CD-ROM drive or downloaded
from the Internet; it cannot be installed or executed on a computer.
Abstract software code is an idea without physical embodiment, and
as such, it does not match 271(f)'s categorization: "components"
amenable to "combination." Windows abstracted from a tangible copy
no doubt is information--a detailed set of instructions--and thus
might be compared to a blueprint (or anything else containing design
information). A blueprint may contain precise instructions for the
construction and combination of the components of a patented device,
but it is not itself a combinable component. What exactly is this "Windows in the abstract" separate from "a copy of Windows"? Do they mean that if I copy a software program that incorporates a patented invention, until that copy is converted into a deliverable form it's actually not an implementation of the patented invention. So, for example, software distributed as source code can't violate a patent until it's compiled?
Microsoft may have laid up a whole heap of trouble for themselves here.
Data point: India also has a huge population, but another mass market company (Ikea) has estimated that the total potential customer base for their products in India is no more than five digits.
There's plenty of Google services that could be rolled out into China.
That's completely unrelated to my comment. They can do that whether or not the servers are hosted in China, or whether they do any censorship beyond what the Chinese government explicitly requires by law, or whether they explicitly inform people when information is being blocked.
I don't think Google would be giving up as much as you think... hosting *anything* in China is a self-defeating policy for a software company, and this proposal doesn't keep them from censoring material: it just keeps them from doing it secretly. Simply telling people that they've had search results blocked is a competitive advantage.
This is more like a shareholder resolution that GM make some currently optional safety equipment standard. Which, history shows, would be good business sense.
I'd like to thank all the folks at ISPs who've responded here.
I long since gave up reporting spammers, even ones who appeared to have a legitimate product (or one that would be legitimate if it wasn't spammed for), because the volume is just too high. I can't even afford the bandwidth to accept mail that's potentially spam: I drop connections from dialup addresses at HELO, and I have several countries blacklisted at that level.
The only spam I report any more is stuff that gets through my filters, doesn't seem to be sent from a botnet, *and* the product is something I'm potentially interested in. I won't buy from the spammer, and I take the effort to report them in an attempt to reduce the chance that the spammer will get a competitive advantage over legitimate businesses that I really care about. This may happen a couple of times a month, so it's not a great burden... and I wish I could do it more often.
I'm glad to hear that this might still have some impact.
"It can be hard to custom-configure notebook computers".
Maybe that's the problem?
Make the notebooks easier to work on with fewer unique modules across the product line.
IBM was doing very well with that approach for a while, swapping out a hard drive in a Thinkpad T23 is a matter of unscrewing one big easy thumbscrew and pulling out a sled... the only tool you needed was a coin... and to change the RAM it didn't even take that much. Hell, I'd rather upgrade the RAM in a Thinkpad T-series than in a lot of the Dell *desktops* I've worked on.
So extend that a little... come up with a standard form factor for compact internal add-on cards, and make them easy to get to, and it'll be just as easy to custom-configure notebooks as desktops.
That's how you need to read a headline like that. Some random company, no matter how large, switching some services (I doubt they're switching everything, I doubt they even know what everything they're running on Linux is) from one version of UNIX to another shouldn't be a big deal. Whether it's switching from Solaris to AIX, Solaris to Linux, Solaris to FreeBSD, AIX to Linux, SCO to FreeBSD, HPUX to AIX, SCO to OSX, HPUX to Linux, or Linux to AIX.
The whole POINT to open systems is that you CAN make these kinds of changes without them being disruptive. Nobody should be surprised by them.
There are dozens of other small PCs that can do what the AppleTV or Neuros hardware can do, and which can run open source software, and are above all cheaper than either. People whose goal is running open source software above all else aren't generally going to be "Apple TV hackers", but for the ones who are... what is it that Neuros offers them? One thing that hardcore open source people are worried about is finding themselves locked in to a single source. Who else is making embedded set-top boxes with a dual-core ARM9 processors they can go to if Neuros goes casters-up?
It ain't just the summary, the article itself is misleading.
First off, the Greenpeace attack on Apple is acknowledged as being a sham. They even backed down on it at one point.
Second, Windows XP has the gaming performance edge, not Vista. Vista has less performance than Windows XP almost across the board, and Vista compatibility problems with hardware and games are rampant right now... AND there's a good many boards (not all of them old ones) that are never expected to have drivers updated for Vista.
If they're going to throw the match by comparing OS X against an older version of Windows, why didn't they throw in complaints about Mac OS 9 as well?
Any DRM is bad DRM
Why, friend, I do not disagree with you, and neither as it happens does Steve Jobs. The DRM in the iTunes store is neither at the instigation of Apple, nor is it a permanent part of the product. Now that the ice has been broken with the EMI deal, Jobs is hoping to get half the music in the uTunes store DRM-free by the end of the year and Apple is actively contacting independants.
But the person I was responding to was arguing in favor of DRM-protected subscription services, so that's what my response was in regards to. I realise that it's popular to take potshots at messages or even parts of messages out of context, but it's really not terribly useful unless you're dealing with people who have problems with long-term memory.
For example:
Non-Apple fanboi != Microsoft fanboi
Since Windows is the only platform Rhapsody runs on, and Real uses Microsoft's inherently insecure HTML control to display what I believe Microsoft is pleased to call "rich content", then it shouldn't be difficult to make the connection that someone who is recommending the use of Rhapsody to avoid the possibility of malware riding on bugs in the Quicktime encapsulation code is, perhaps, not thinking things through. One doesn't have to be any kind of "fanboi" to connect the dots.
There's ONE hole in a CD, and that's the one that sits on the spindle.
Since you apparently don't use Windows, I suspect that's probably true for you, but the original poster would be well advised to beware of CDs that attempt to install backdoors in the OS when mounted.