There's a huge difference between "apple" or "amazon" and "windows". The first two are common english words, but they're entirely unrelated to the product/company they describe. On the other hand, "windows" actually literally describes something in Microsoft's OS. It's a functional description, not an arbitrary label.
I doubt a grocer would be able to trademark the term "apple", and a jungle-tourism outfit probably would have only a weak claim on "amazon".
I've been using Mozilla as my primary browser for about a year. Admittedly, I'm not exactly the AOL demographic, but I almost never come across such sites. Even when I do, they tend to have workarounds in place so that they work with Netscape Communicator 4.x -- and if they've gone to the bother of doing that, they'll definitely go to the bother of making the site work with AOL's browser.
That's because IE actually preloads most of itself into memory when Windows starts. You can get the same effect in Mozilla by turning on the quick start feature.
Netscape Communicator 4.x had a primative but extremely useful Roaming Profiles function, but Mozilla doesn't. A lot of people have voted for it, but it just hasn't been a top coding priority. All is not lost, however:
Ben Bucksch of Beonex fame has offered to help complete this oft-requested oft-marked-as-no-time-to-implement feature. He's doing the work as a tip-jar sponsored project, so check out bug #124026 and contribute a little bit if you can.
Even if you aren't particularly interested in the roaming ability, it's an interesting situation to watch -- any open-source project the size of mozilla must have lots of opportunities for independent developers to jump in and work on a open-source-for-cash basis. If Ben is really successful here, it's a great case-study in a way for small developers to make money working at open source / free software. I'm curious to see how this example turns out....
You just combined supply and demand into demand only.
Yes, that's pretty much what I'm saying: the supply isn't an issue.
If the demand outstrips the ability to provide it, that's an issue with supply.
With digital content in its natural state, it is simply next to impossible for this to happen. It's only when one starts making up laws or other constraining mechanisms that "providing it" gets into the picture.
Replace "limiting factor bandwidth" with "factory and logistics" and "content" with "PS2" or some other B&M item and you'll see what I mean.
I'm not sure how I'll see what you mean by using an inappropriate analogy. The entire point is that there's a considerable difference between digital information and real-world products which involve "factories and logistics".
Largely irrelevant. I'll assume you're talking about the general problem of bandwidth, not just the site-getting-linked-and-stomped phenomenon. There might be issues like this in the initial release of some content if the infrastructure for that release is badly planned, but beyond the first stage or so, the limiting-factor bandwidth is paid for by the consumers. This makes this an issue of demand, not of supply.
And you need to clarify "digital". CDs are digital, and any physical media has a limited supply, both of the media itself and due to the logistics of shipping it.
By "digital", I mean literally that -- "existing in digital form". I'm not really interested in the media on which that form happens to be stored. If it's CD-Rs or hard drive space, again, the issue is one of demand, not supply. (Of course, in turn creating demand for real world products -- the hard drives and blank optical media.)
You're claiming that overclockers invented water-cooled computers? What about, for example, the Cray 1? And there's almost certainly earlier examples. This is really old industry tech, not some crazy idea the hotrodder kids dreamed up.
This could be done relatively easily with postfix (or qmail, if you're into that sort of thing), procmail, and mutt. Not trivial, but far from a "nightmare".
There used to be a mock Tarot deck called Morgan's Tarot, which had a card that said, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." Dealing with lawyers is like that. -- Tim O'Reilly's patent article
Morgan's Tarot, copyright 1970. Lord of the Rings, completed in 1948.
Geez, you'd think he'd know better. Or maybe O'Reilly only deals with Unix wizards? (Who, from my experience may be subtle but are generally nice....)
I'm going to say "no". There's huge architectural differences between KDE and GNOME -- it's not just that they're interchangable faces. In fact, there's also huge conceptual differences in the way the widget libraries work -- qt's slots/sockets mechanism, for example. There's no way to do a 1-1 mapping at any level beyond the most simplistic.
OSX/86 would have no applications for it right of the bat, and it would die the same sort of death that BeOS did.
Not necessarily. I assume it would be very easy to port most PPC OS X apps to Intel -- maybe just even a matter of a recompile. Software makers would jump all over the chance to sell to a bigger market.
Apple won't release a general Intel port of OS X. It makes no sense for them to do so. Apple makes the vast majority of its revenue through hardware sales, somewhere around 90-95%. If they released Mac OS X for Intel their hardware sales would fall dramatically.
I'm curious to know if you actually read Cringely's article, which argues fairly convincingly that this isn't true. You don't respond to his point at all, but simply reiterate the initial claim.
Re:Why would anyone want to carry it around?
on
Foot-Powered Laptop
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· Score: 2
Well, obviously depends on the occasion. If you're going to be in the outback for a month, one additional battery isn't going to do you much good.
Ben Bucksch of Beonex fame has offered to work on the roaming profile support on a tips-for-code basis. See bug 17048 for the background, and bug 124026 for the funding issues.
Looks very promising -- if you want this feature, consider throwing in a few dollars. If this kind of development model turns out to work well, it could be a revolution for large Open Source / Free Software projects.
1. dvd media is expensive now, but it'll come down in price.
2. you think blockbuster pays less than the cost of one rental for each copy of a movie they own??? I'm obviously not suggesting that they throw away the burned copy after one rental -- that'd be silly.
Weird! I totally meant to write "netflix subscriber", and in rereading the above just now, I notice I actually wrote "netflix survivor". And I even used "preview" and everything. Well. Take that as you will.:)
I'm in the US; I like to read about cool things that are only available in Europe or Japan. (Happens often enough on/.) Shows you what you're missing out on.:)
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There's a huge difference between "apple" or "amazon" and "windows". The first two are common english words, but they're entirely unrelated to the product/company they describe. On the other hand, "windows" actually literally describes something in Microsoft's OS. It's a functional description, not an arbitrary label.
I doubt a grocer would be able to trademark the term "apple", and a jungle-tourism outfit probably would have only a weak claim on "amazon".
Hey, the Brunching Shuttlecocks just published an article relevant to this one: The Twelve Least Surprising AP Headlines.
I've been using Mozilla as my primary browser for about a year. Admittedly, I'm not exactly the AOL demographic, but I almost never come across such sites. Even when I do, they tend to have workarounds in place so that they work with Netscape Communicator 4.x -- and if they've gone to the bother of doing that, they'll definitely go to the bother of making the site work with AOL's browser.
That's because IE actually preloads most of itself into memory when Windows starts. You can get the same effect in Mozilla by turning on the quick start feature.
Netscape Communicator 4.x had a primative but extremely useful Roaming Profiles function, but Mozilla doesn't. A lot of people have voted for it, but it just hasn't been a top coding priority. All is not lost, however:
Ben Bucksch of Beonex fame has offered to help complete this oft-requested oft-marked-as-no-time-to-implement feature. He's doing the work as a tip-jar sponsored project, so check out bug #124026 and contribute a little bit if you can.
Even if you aren't particularly interested in the roaming ability, it's an interesting situation to watch -- any open-source project the size of mozilla must have lots of opportunities for independent developers to jump in and work on a open-source-for-cash basis. If Ben is really successful here, it's a great case-study in a way for small developers to make money working at open source / free software. I'm curious to see how this example turns out....
Cool. At the very least, we can hope to influence Google's top search queries. How much power does /. really have?
You just combined supply and demand into demand only.
Yes, that's pretty much what I'm saying: the supply isn't an issue.
If the demand outstrips the ability to provide it, that's an issue with supply.
With digital content in its natural state, it is simply next to impossible for this to happen. It's only when one starts making up laws or other constraining mechanisms that "providing it" gets into the picture.
Replace "limiting factor bandwidth" with "factory and logistics" and "content" with "PS2" or some other B&M item and you'll see what I mean.
I'm not sure how I'll see what you mean by using an inappropriate analogy. The entire point is that there's a considerable difference between digital information and real-world products which involve "factories and logistics".
Then what pray tell is the /. effect?
Largely irrelevant. I'll assume you're talking about the general problem of bandwidth, not just the site-getting-linked-and-stomped phenomenon. There might be issues like this in the initial release of some content if the infrastructure for that release is badly planned, but beyond the first stage or so, the limiting-factor bandwidth is paid for by the consumers. This makes this an issue of demand, not of supply.
And you need to clarify "digital". CDs are digital, and any physical media has a limited supply, both of the media itself and due to the logistics of shipping it.
By "digital", I mean literally that -- "existing in digital form". I'm not really interested in the media on which that form happens to be stored. If it's CD-Rs or hard drive space, again, the issue is one of demand, not supply. (Of course, in turn creating demand for real world products -- the hard drives and blank optical media.)
that's not a supply issue -- it's a demand issue.
You're claiming that overclockers invented water-cooled computers? What about, for example, the Cray 1? And there's almost certainly earlier examples. This is really old industry tech, not some crazy idea the hotrodder kids dreamed up.
The simple point is that media of any sort is limited in supply.
:)
Except of course digital media. The "supply" isn't limited by any "natural" market forces, so the industry needs laws to artificially make it so.
But you know that.
Are payphones still callable somewhere in the US?
the BT patent is a *US* one, not a UK one.
This could be done relatively easily with postfix (or qmail, if you're into that sort of thing), procmail, and mutt. Not trivial, but far from a "nightmare".
There used to be a mock Tarot deck called Morgan's Tarot, which had a card that said, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." Dealing with lawyers is like that. -- Tim O'Reilly's patent article
....)
Morgan's Tarot, copyright 1970. Lord of the Rings, completed in 1948.
Geez, you'd think he'd know better. Or maybe O'Reilly only deals with Unix wizards? (Who, from my experience may be subtle but are generally nice
I'm going to say "no". There's huge architectural differences between KDE and GNOME -- it's not just that they're interchangable faces. In fact, there's also huge conceptual differences in the way the widget libraries work -- qt's slots/sockets mechanism, for example. There's no way to do a 1-1 mapping at any level beyond the most simplistic.
OSX/86 would have no applications for it right of the bat, and it would die the same sort of death that BeOS did.
Not necessarily. I assume it would be very easy to port most PPC OS X apps to Intel -- maybe just even a matter of a recompile. Software makers would jump all over the chance to sell to a bigger market.
You can't beat Microsoft that way -- look at what happened to OS/2 and its "Better Windows than Windows / Better DOS than DOS" strategy.
Apple won't release a general Intel port of OS X. It makes no sense for them to do so. Apple makes the vast majority of its revenue through hardware sales, somewhere around 90-95%. If they released Mac OS X for Intel their hardware sales would fall dramatically.
I'm curious to know if you actually read Cringely's article, which argues fairly convincingly that this isn't true. You don't respond to his point at all, but simply reiterate the initial claim.
Well, obviously depends on the occasion. If you're going to be in the outback for a month, one additional battery isn't going to do you much good.
Ben Bucksch of Beonex fame has offered to work on the roaming profile support on a tips-for-code basis. See bug 17048 for the background, and bug 124026 for the funding issues.
Looks very promising -- if you want this feature, consider throwing in a few dollars. If this kind of development model turns out to work well, it could be a revolution for large Open Source / Free Software projects.
three rental slots only makes a two-stage pipeline. Presumably, you're watching one of them. :)
1. dvd media is expensive now, but it'll come down in price.
2. you think blockbuster pays less than the cost of one rental for each copy of a movie they own??? I'm obviously not suggesting that they throw away the burned copy after one rental -- that'd be silly.
Weird! I totally meant to write "netflix subscriber", and in rereading the above just now, I notice I actually wrote "netflix survivor". And I even used "preview" and everything. Well. Take that as you will. :)
I'm in the US; I like to read about cool things that are only available in Europe or Japan. (Happens often enough on /.) Shows you what you're missing out on. :)