I really wish AOL would put NS/Mozilla to good use. In all honesty, I think they're still tied to IE because they aren't a software development company so much as they are a media outlet. It would probably require a huge retooling of the AOL client software to include NS 6.x or Mozilla. I'm not saying that's a reasonable excuse or anything!
As for putting the NS installers on all the AOL coasters, well, you're absolutely right. It's pretty stupid of them not to. If they started doing that and making over the IE based browser in the AOL client software so that it was Mozilla based, they'd really regain a large part of the browser market.
personally though, I think they're still using IE as a legal point more than anything else.
"See, in order to be competetive, we need to use IE. Wah. Wah."
I think I see now why they want computer manufacturers to control which browser comes with what computer. If I could click a checkbox at Dell.com and say I want Opera instead of IE, then Opera would (in theory) get paid by Dell for it.
That would be a great option! I like the way you're thinking there! If there was a way for iCab, Opera or Omni web to get OEM distribution and it came as a BTO option, I'd be so down with that! And if they could get a small fee for it's distribution, that would be fabulous. I want to see the other browser developers survive and thrive!
I've been playing with OmniWeb, Opera and iCab for some time now. They are all lean, mean browsing machines and I've paid for all three. None of them have the "user centric" features like auction tracking or stuff like that, but damn if they aren't small, fast and standards compliant. I actually use Opera and iCab pretty much for making sure my HTML code is clean and compliant. Bad HTML breaks! I can't believe I actually want a browser that will very sternly point out my mistakes in coding.
And please don't sell me that same old "monopoly bad" argument - I believe in it, but what happens when one evil monopoly sues another evil monopoly over unfair practices? Well, I just wanted to point out that there actually used to be a viable market for browsers. From the tone of this thread it really seems like a lot of people don't remember that someone could actually sell a browser and turn a profit from it's sale. So much of this thread seems to be about one "evil monopoly" versus another and so forth and so on that they're not even focusing on why M$ got into trouble in the first place. It has everything to do with the fact that they used monopoly power from one market to dominate another and crush the potential in that market for anyone to ever make money off it it again. IE didn't kill NS, Windows and Office did.
And WTF does "justice" mean in this context?
Well, that's a whole huge can of worms that I do not have an answer for, nor will I pretend to have one. I do have an educated opinion as to why M$ should be nailed. Their corporate philosophy and behavior sickens me and they have been found guilty of abusing monopoly power. BTW, no one can ever be found guilty of being a monopoly. There's nothing illegal about it! Just don't abuse that power!
Frankly, I don't care why AOL/TW is suing M$. It's their battle to fight with their money. If it turns out that my tax dollars are being used to aid their fight, I may very well change my tune.
And, no, I didn't "just figure out" any of this. I just thought you'd made a very good point and I wanted to state my opinion in regard to it.
Wow! How old is the crowd reading this? Doesn't anyone remember that Netscape used to have the best browser out there and that they actually charged money for it? Until M$ figured out the only way they could be top dog in the browser market was that they had to give it away for free and develop it using profits from Windows and Office, a company could actually SELL A BROWSER FOR MONEY!
Once a big chunk of their revenue stream was taken away, the quality of the browser really began to suffer. Tack on the fact that M$ had some licensing agreements with many PC OEM's requiring them to NOT SHIP Netscape on PC's as well as their weird proprietary tags (not that NS didn't have a few as well) and you have a recipe for NS' demise.
Hell! M$ even courted major entertainment sites and encouraged them to develop their sites so that they could ONLY be viewed with IE for Windows! I'm a Mac user and years ago I used only Netscape and I couldn't even access the star trek website. Totally unsupported for Netscape and the lack of Mac support was just rubbing salt in the wounds.
M$ needs to pay for this reckless disregard for consumer choice and if AOL/TW wants to use their own money to fight this battle, I'm fine with that. The US government , since Bush was appointed president, has shown that they no longer have the cojones to do what is right and just.
Well, back in the day, Netscape actually used to CHARGE MONEY for their browser. A nominal fee really. And back then it was by far the superior browser. M$ came along and decided that they could squash their rival by simply giving away their browser for free because they have so much money laying around from Windows profits.
The real crux of the matter is that M$ was able to, in one fell stroke, destroy a market where a company actually could MAKE MONEY selling a browser and it took their OS monopoly power to do it. If the IE development division had to turn a profit based off of the quality of their product, IE wouldn't have survived. The only reason IE has developed to it's current state is becuase of profits from Windows and Office sales.
At least AOL is not wasting billions of tax dollars and then essentially rolling over at the command of a President who actually believes he speaks "Mexican".
They're spending their own money to fight this battle. Personally, I'm cool with that.
Like the article says, AOL/TW wants "justice" for IE being given away, and driving away the ability for Netscape to charge for its product.
Exactly! Back in the day, a little company called Netscape COULD and DID charge for a browser. The market allowed for Netscape to charge that. Consumers bought it.
M$, realizing that they had gotten a late start with the internet and hating to play second fiddle, decided to give away their browser for free, essentially destroying the market for any company that actually planned to make money off of selling a browser. Netscape being the only company at the time that was big enough to catch M$'s attention got hit first and got hit hard. They didn't stand a chance. They needed to move product to make money and M$ just came in and squashed a huge part of their revenue stream.
M$ can make and break markets. M$ can buy and sell the competition. That is what the entire antitrust trial is about.
There is nothing inherently illegal about a monopoly, but when you use your monopoly in one market to strangle competitors in other markets so that you achieve dominance in that market, well, THAT is illegal and that is exactly what M$ did.
They used their cash reserves from Windows profits to develop an internet browser that would never make money to take over a market that was dominated by a company who was (to a certain degree) dependent upon revenues from their browser to further it's own development.
I hear what you're saying. I really do. However, the thing that really put the final coffin that is Netscape was when M$ started giving away their browser. NS actually made money selling their browser. It helped further the development of the browser and their server products. Then came the restrictive licensing agreements from M$. "OEM's! Thou shlat only place IE on your machine. Do it not and I shall revoke thine Windows license." Talk about playing hardball!
I honestly don't think Netscape could have competed on quality of product alone once the fiery Red Eye in Morder... er... Redmond got wind of what they were actually doing down there in Mountain View. Give away the browser for free, get the people hooked, and then bolt it into the OS. Classic drug dealer approach!
The AOL online software, which consumers can install for free from the Web or a compact disk, is now designed to run on Microsoft's Windows operating system. But the AOL software could be configured to override Windows and launch a version of Red Hat's Linux operating system, sources said.
I hope this wouldn't be done by default. There had better be a lot of warnings indicating that the disk was about to be reformatted and that data could (and probably would) be lost.
Now, I have no problem with Windows being overwritten. I just hope end users are made fully aware of the potential risks to their data.
The Disney comment is hilarious because of the rumors abounding for years that Disney might buy Apple (all totally bogus of course). So we'd have M$ putting out their usual garbage, AOL/TW putting out a version of Linux and Disney distributing Darwin/FreeBSD.
So an actual software company distibuting bloated, buggy, insecure crap and you'd have 2 media outlets distributing secure, stable and powerful software. It's just freaking hilarious.
Interesting paradox you've set up there. The only part I necessarily disagree with is that OSS developers would start using the free closed souce high quality tools. Consumers and corporate types would naturally flock to that kind of software. True OSS developers would still stick to what they believe in philosophically.
Whatever AOL/TW would develop out of a RedHat distro would be aimed at corporate and home markets, not the OSS &/. crowds. Plus, if it's AOL/TW based tools, it will no longer be cool or cutting edge and therefore not be the distro of choice for true geeks.
PDF's are not meant to be edited. They are meant to be distributed. There is always a source document for a PDF that is "distilled". If you need to edit the PDF, you simply edit it's source file (whatever that may be) and re-distill. It's no more difficult than editing a Photoshop file to create a new navigation button for an HTML document. Or can you do that sort of editing in HTML as well and I've just read all the wrong books?
PDF has to be simply one of the most useful document formats I've ever come across. They can be made from just about ANY source; Word, Illustrator, Freehand, Photoshop, Quark, PageMaker, InDesign, Excel, PowerPoint.... you name it. You are not dependent on a text editor and finicky browser rendering engines. You can embed low res or high res graphics as well as vector information. Fonts can be embedded. You can embed color profiles and create files in both RGB and CMYK. It can compress images to ridiculously small sizes. They are navigable and can embed a wide variety of media.
The world is larger than the web browser. Check it out.
Wow! Have you ever heard of MacOS? User friendly and secure since 1984. Now with a BSD core, you get high powered networking and stability. Security is now an issue on the Mac because it now has a command line that hackers can exploit.
Dude! Look at who this thing is designed for. Schools and home users who merely want to make photo albums, listen to music, make very rudimentary DVD's, surf the web and do email. It's expandable to 1GB of RAM which is MORE THAN ENOUGH to do any and all of these things simultaneously. With FireWire hard drives dropping in place, you have all the hot-swapable storage you'll ever need. 3 USB ports plus 2 on the keyboard. For a home user this all the expandability they'll ever need! Airport, ethernet, a modem and a G4. Sheesh! I'm happy with my B&W G3 400 for all the Photoshop work I do, granted all low res and for the web, but damn the new iMac packs A LOT of punch into a consumer level machine and takes up very little space!
And, while I'm at it, bigotry of ANY kind is not something to be proud of! No matter how mundane. If you don't like Mac's, fine. Shut your mouth and go to another thread.
As a long time Mac faithul, I have to admit to being disappointed. I think the new iMac is a very cool piece of hardware and I actually wouldn't mind having one, but this was not "way beyond the rumor sites". Far from it. Nothing short of actually shipping G5's or a PDA (I know... I know.... ain't gonna happen) would have actually impressed me.
The iMac singlehandedly brought Apple back from the brink three years ago and the home consumers and educators are very happy with their iMacs and iBooks, but us power users are getting the shaft. And WE'RE the ones that actually cruise the rumor sites!
I'm especially disappointed as I'm in film school and we're gonna be learning FCP3 very soon and I really wanted there to be a G5 DP machine at school!
Hey! They got a G4 cpu, harddrive, firewire, usb, ethernet, airport, video card, modem, RAM and dc/dvd(r) into that TINY little base. It's not just a pretty yet odd looking little machine. It's a bit of an engineering marvel.
If Sony and IBM are involved... Apple will follow suit and probably license the technology. This is digital hub type stuff and that is where Apple is heading. They are publicly proclaiming that they are modeling themselves after Sony and not traditional software developers now. And with IBM being their inly reliable partner in the PPC alliance, well, they won't want to get in bad with IBM.
Seems some local newspapers are way ahead of slashdot
And there's something surprising about this?
Pretty sure it's a fake.
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 1
I watched the vidoes pretty carefully last evening. Some of the shadows don't really match what should be casting them. The text stays stationary on the screen even while the user moved the iWalk around a little as he is writing.
It's a pretty good fake if you ask me. I can only hope that this really exists. It looks pretty damn snazzy.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the comments, I did appreciate them - it's why I post. :)
;-)
Me too, man. Me too. Even if I do get offtopic!
Yeah, kinda like the '96 US Presidential elections.
I don't really LIKE Clinton, but at least he's not Bob Dole.
I really wish AOL would put NS/Mozilla to good use. In all honesty, I think they're still tied to IE because they aren't a software development company so much as they are a media outlet. It would probably require a huge retooling of the AOL client software to include NS 6.x or Mozilla. I'm not saying that's a reasonable excuse or anything!
As for putting the NS installers on all the AOL coasters, well, you're absolutely right. It's pretty stupid of them not to. If they started doing that and making over the IE based browser in the AOL client software so that it was Mozilla based, they'd really regain a large part of the browser market.
personally though, I think they're still using IE as a legal point more than anything else.
"See, in order to be competetive, we need to use IE. Wah. Wah."
I think I see now why they want computer manufacturers to control which browser comes with what computer. If I could click a checkbox at Dell.com and say I want Opera instead of IE, then Opera would (in theory) get paid by Dell for it.
That would be a great option! I like the way you're thinking there! If there was a way for iCab, Opera or Omni web to get OEM distribution and it came as a BTO option, I'd be so down with that! And if they could get a small fee for it's distribution, that would be fabulous. I want to see the other browser developers survive and thrive!
I've been playing with OmniWeb, Opera and iCab for some time now. They are all lean, mean browsing machines and I've paid for all three. None of them have the "user centric" features like auction tracking or stuff like that, but damn if they aren't small, fast and standards compliant. I actually use Opera and iCab pretty much for making sure my HTML code is clean and compliant. Bad HTML breaks! I can't believe I actually want a browser that will very sternly point out my mistakes in coding.
And please don't sell me that same old "monopoly bad" argument - I believe in it, but what happens when one evil monopoly sues another evil monopoly over unfair practices?
Well, I just wanted to point out that there actually used to be a viable market for browsers. From the tone of this thread it really seems like a lot of people don't remember that someone could actually sell a browser and turn a profit from it's sale. So much of this thread seems to be about one "evil monopoly" versus another and so forth and so on that they're not even focusing on why M$ got into trouble in the first place. It has everything to do with the fact that they used monopoly power from one market to dominate another and crush the potential in that market for anyone to ever make money off it it again. IE didn't kill NS, Windows and Office did.
And WTF does "justice" mean in this context?
Well, that's a whole huge can of worms that I do not have an answer for, nor will I pretend to have one. I do have an educated opinion as to why M$ should be nailed. Their corporate philosophy and behavior sickens me and they have been found guilty of abusing monopoly power. BTW, no one can ever be found guilty of being a monopoly. There's nothing illegal about it! Just don't abuse that power!
Frankly, I don't care why AOL/TW is suing M$. It's their battle to fight with their money. If it turns out that my tax dollars are being used to aid their fight, I may very well change my tune.
And, no, I didn't "just figure out" any of this. I just thought you'd made a very good point and I wanted to state my opinion in regard to it.
Wow! How old is the crowd reading this? Doesn't anyone remember that Netscape used to have the best browser out there and that they actually charged money for it? Until M$ figured out the only way they could be top dog in the browser market was that they had to give it away for free and develop it using profits from Windows and Office, a company could actually SELL A BROWSER FOR MONEY!
Once a big chunk of their revenue stream was taken away, the quality of the browser really began to suffer. Tack on the fact that M$ had some licensing agreements with many PC OEM's requiring them to NOT SHIP Netscape on PC's as well as their weird proprietary tags (not that NS didn't have a few as well) and you have a recipe for NS' demise.
Hell! M$ even courted major entertainment sites and encouraged them to develop their sites so that they could ONLY be viewed with IE for Windows! I'm a Mac user and years ago I used only Netscape and I couldn't even access the star trek website. Totally unsupported for Netscape and the lack of Mac support was just rubbing salt in the wounds.
M$ needs to pay for this reckless disregard for consumer choice and if AOL/TW wants to use their own money to fight this battle, I'm fine with that. The US government , since Bush was appointed president, has shown that they no longer have the cojones to do what is right and just.
Well, back in the day, Netscape actually used to CHARGE MONEY for their browser. A nominal fee really. And back then it was by far the superior browser. M$ came along and decided that they could squash their rival by simply giving away their browser for free because they have so much money laying around from Windows profits.
The real crux of the matter is that M$ was able to, in one fell stroke, destroy a market where a company actually could MAKE MONEY selling a browser and it took their OS monopoly power to do it. If the IE development division had to turn a profit based off of the quality of their product, IE wouldn't have survived. The only reason IE has developed to it's current state is becuase of profits from Windows and Office sales.
At least AOL is not wasting billions of tax dollars and then essentially rolling over at the command of a President who actually believes he speaks "Mexican".
They're spending their own money to fight this battle. Personally, I'm cool with that.
Like the article says, AOL/TW wants "justice" for IE being given away, and driving away the ability for Netscape to charge for its product.
Exactly! Back in the day, a little company called Netscape COULD and DID charge for a browser. The market allowed for Netscape to charge that. Consumers bought it.
M$, realizing that they had gotten a late start with the internet and hating to play second fiddle, decided to give away their browser for free, essentially destroying the market for any company that actually planned to make money off of selling a browser. Netscape being the only company at the time that was big enough to catch M$'s attention got hit first and got hit hard. They didn't stand a chance. They needed to move product to make money and M$ just came in and squashed a huge part of their revenue stream.
M$ can make and break markets. M$ can buy and sell the competition. That is what the entire antitrust trial is about.
There is nothing inherently illegal about a monopoly, but when you use your monopoly in one market to strangle competitors in other markets so that you achieve dominance in that market, well, THAT is illegal and that is exactly what M$ did.
They used their cash reserves from Windows profits to develop an internet browser that would never make money to take over a market that was dominated by a company who was (to a certain degree) dependent upon revenues from their browser to further it's own development.
It's just sickening really.
I hear what you're saying. I really do. However, the thing that really put the final coffin that is Netscape was when M$ started giving away their browser. NS actually made money selling their browser. It helped further the development of the browser and their server products. Then came the restrictive licensing agreements from M$. "OEM's! Thou shlat only place IE on your machine. Do it not and I shall revoke thine Windows license." Talk about playing hardball!
I honestly don't think Netscape could have competed on quality of product alone once the fiery Red Eye in Morder... er... Redmond got wind of what they were actually doing down there in Mountain View. Give away the browser for free, get the people hooked, and then bolt it into the OS. Classic drug dealer approach!
Taken from an article on MSNBC
The AOL online software, which consumers can install for free from the Web or a compact disk, is now designed to run on Microsoft's Windows operating system. But the AOL software could be configured to override Windows and launch a version of Red Hat's Linux operating system, sources said.
I hope this wouldn't be done by default. There had better be a lot of warnings indicating that the disk was about to be reformatted and that data could (and probably would) be lost.
Now, I have no problem with Windows being overwritten. I just hope end users are made fully aware of the potential risks to their data.
The Disney comment is hilarious because of the rumors abounding for years that Disney might buy Apple (all totally bogus of course). So we'd have M$ putting out their usual garbage, AOL/TW putting out a version of Linux and Disney distributing Darwin/FreeBSD.
So an actual software company distibuting bloated, buggy, insecure crap and you'd have 2 media outlets distributing secure, stable and powerful software. It's just freaking hilarious.
Interesting paradox you've set up there. The only part I necessarily disagree with is that OSS developers would start using the free closed souce high quality tools. Consumers and corporate types would naturally flock to that kind of software. True OSS developers would still stick to what they believe in philosophically.
/. crowds. Plus, if it's AOL/TW based tools, it will no longer be cool or cutting edge and therefore not be the distro of choice for true geeks.
Whatever AOL/TW would develop out of a RedHat distro would be aimed at corporate and home markets, not the OSS &
They're not open source, but you can pretty handily edit PDF's in Freehand, Acrobat and Illustrator.
PDF's are not meant to be edited. They are meant to be distributed. There is always a source document for a PDF that is "distilled". If you need to edit the PDF, you simply edit it's source file (whatever that may be) and re-distill. It's no more difficult than editing a Photoshop file to create a new navigation button for an HTML document. Or can you do that sort of editing in HTML as well and I've just read all the wrong books?
PDF has to be simply one of the most useful document formats I've ever come across. They can be made from just about ANY source; Word, Illustrator, Freehand, Photoshop, Quark, PageMaker, InDesign, Excel, PowerPoint.... you name it. You are not dependent on a text editor and finicky browser rendering engines. You can embed low res or high res graphics as well as vector information. Fonts can be embedded. You can embed color profiles and create files in both RGB and CMYK. It can compress images to ridiculously small sizes. They are navigable and can embed a wide variety of media.
The world is larger than the web browser. Check it out.
Wow! Have you ever heard of MacOS? User friendly and secure since 1984. Now with a BSD core, you get high powered networking and stability. Security is now an issue on the Mac because it now has a command line that hackers can exploit.
I still pray daily for Mt. Ranier to erupt and take out ALL of microsoft
Unfortunately, Mt. Rainier erupting won't take out Redmond. It might damage Puyallup and maybe Tacoma, but Redmond is a long way off.
Dude! Look at who this thing is designed for. Schools and home users who merely want to make photo albums, listen to music, make very rudimentary DVD's, surf the web and do email. It's expandable to 1GB of RAM which is MORE THAN ENOUGH to do any and all of these things simultaneously. With FireWire hard drives dropping in place, you have all the hot-swapable storage you'll ever need. 3 USB ports plus 2 on the keyboard. For a home user this all the expandability they'll ever need! Airport, ethernet, a modem and a G4. Sheesh! I'm happy with my B&W G3 400 for all the Photoshop work I do, granted all low res and for the web, but damn the new iMac packs A LOT of punch into a consumer level machine and takes up very little space!
And, while I'm at it, bigotry of ANY kind is not something to be proud of! No matter how mundane. If you don't like Mac's, fine. Shut your mouth and go to another thread.
As a long time Mac faithul, I have to admit to being disappointed. I think the new iMac is a very cool piece of hardware and I actually wouldn't mind having one, but this was not "way beyond the rumor sites". Far from it. Nothing short of actually shipping G5's or a PDA (I know... I know.... ain't gonna happen) would have actually impressed me.
The iMac singlehandedly brought Apple back from the brink three years ago and the home consumers and educators are very happy with their iMacs and iBooks, but us power users are getting the shaft. And WE'RE the ones that actually cruise the rumor sites!
I'm especially disappointed as I'm in film school and we're gonna be learning FCP3 very soon and I really wanted there to be a G5 DP machine at school!
Hey! They got a G4 cpu, harddrive, firewire, usb, ethernet, airport, video card, modem, RAM and dc/dvd(r) into that TINY little base. It's not just a pretty yet odd looking little machine. It's a bit of an engineering marvel.
Might as well not watch any tv, eat meat, use medicine, drive a car or any of that politically irresponsible stuff either.
And what do you think powers that power hog of a pentium you probably use?
If you're gonna get self righteous about "issues", you should pick something a bit more worthy of self righteousness.
If Sony and IBM are involved... Apple will follow suit and probably license the technology. This is digital hub type stuff and that is where Apple is heading. They are publicly proclaiming that they are modeling themselves after Sony and not traditional software developers now. And with IBM being their inly reliable partner in the PPC alliance, well, they won't want to get in bad with IBM.
Seems some local newspapers are way ahead of slashdot
And there's something surprising about this?
I watched the vidoes pretty carefully last evening. Some of the shadows don't really match what should be casting them. The text stays stationary on the screen even while the user moved the iWalk around a little as he is writing.
It's a pretty good fake if you ask me. I can only hope that this really exists. It looks pretty damn snazzy.