Calling tiered pricing 'cripple-ware' is really being quite silly.
I didn't mention "tiered pricing" anywhere in my post, because I was talking about cripple-ware which is something different.
Generally when different tiers are offered customers get some product or service of extra value, and it costs the company more to add that value. By paying more for a service contract, for example, a customer can phone up and get help at three in the morning from paid on-call staff, or get a part flown in within 'x' hours, or physically "more stuff". SQL Server workgroup edition is cripple-ware. SQL server editions all have a common code base, and it it would've cost MSFT exactly zero to allow 64-bit functionality and use of all installed RAM on the Express and Workgroup editions. Conversely, customers pay significantly more to go from Workgroup to Standard editions, and almost ALL of that extra cost is pure increase in margin.
Oracle cripple-ware because there are different versions with different abilities? Is an IBM mainframe cripple-ware because you didnt pay for all the processors, even if they're in the box sitting in your data center?
Yes on both counts. All it takes to enable the processors is the twist of a screwdriver, or shorting a jumper or twiddling a bit, and that IBM mainframe is then more capable at almost no cost to IBM. Oracle is cripple-ware for the same reasons as MSFT SQL Server. Though in defence of Oracle and IBM, they offer support contracts alongside their enterprise offerings of a calibre that MSFT couldn't ever hope to match right now.
Is RedHat management service crippleware just because you have to pay to use it for more than one machine?
No it isn't, because it is more service and thus more costs involved for Red Hat. More machines==more potential problems==more resources and equipment needed on an on-call basis, 24/7/365.
Running a business doesn't require dishonest cripple-ware strategies, and such a wide-spread use of such strategies seems most prevalent in computing and media (almost exclusively in fact--it is almost never seen in most other industries)
can we not allow people to register for a census on the internet?
Sure you can. I submitted my census questions via secure website during the last census in 2006...but that was in Canada. It was easier, and certainly less expensive to process (didn't save paper though, because everyone still got the mailer; you could fill it in and mail it back or log in with the information provided in the mailer).
I'm not sure about how it goes in the US, but sending out canvassers only covers about two percent of data collection. Canvassing is only used for the following:
* to survey transient populations--ie. the homeless-- * to collect from remote locations such as the far north, where mail service and internet connectivity are slow, limited or unavailable * to get data from households who didnt reply via internet or the mailer (and to charge you if you refuse to respond to the mandatory questions on the census)
I can't imagine, even given the 1000 percent larger population, that implementing electronic data collection for canvassers to get that two percent of data would require billions of dollars to implement (the US dollar hasn't depreciated THAT much;-). But, then again, it IS a federal government operation we're talking about, and poorly specified requirements, unbounded scope-creep and mismanagement know no bounds.
You are right that only the free "express" version of MS SQL Server limits database storage size, but you are missing the point. ALL versions except for the big bad $25,000 "enterprise" version processor license version place artificial limitations on operation at some level by disabling parts of what is largely identical code ("golden screwdriver" engineering). The "workgroup edition" is definitely not free in any sense and is VERY crippled.
* express and workgroup ($740) editions disable 64-bit support * express and workgroup editions are artivicially limited to using 1 and 3 GB of RAM respectively * Only developer and enterprise are free from restrictions on number of CPU cores (others limit to between 1 and 4) * ALL versions place artificial limitations on connectivity ('x' number of users simultaneously via CALs) even if the hardware supports far more.
These are artificial limitations that are ADDED to these versions to cripple functionality; there are no cost savings whatsoever (development, code, packaging, etc) to MSFT by placing these limitations on the lower-cost editions. They are cripple-ware solely to enhance revenue streams of higher-margin editions. THAT is the point he is making.
Modularity in and of itself is hardly a new innovation (MSFT is a very late arrival at that party). Given MSFT's established practice of selling cripple-ware it looks like this is as much (or more) about modular LICENSING than the more modular architecture of the next version of Windows (ie. the prime motivator of making the OS more modular is to facilitate the licensing module). If you have DRM'ed modules for things like "memory management" and "peripheral communications" and whatnot they can drop in/activate crippled versions of those modules, and the DRM in combination with modular architecture could be used to make it easier to enforce subscription models too (for example, you can be dialed back to "Windows Basic" mode if your "ultimate subscription" expires).
SQL Server is the water that made the MSFT slope slippery...
Bell/Sympatico internet access is awful almost everywhere. I have seen two reviews and Bell was the bottom-of-the-barrel both times (the Marketplace story was pretty entertaining if lacking in technical details).
If you can go with Shaw or Telus or Rogers you are going to be far better off. Even better than that, there are still a few independents out there that offer superior service and won't throttle your connection so badly (if at all). For example, even though it has to run over some of Telus' gear Radiant Communications offers DSL service that is superior to that Telus themselves provides.
I'm not a huge fan of most of the CBC's programming, but it is encouraging to see them act like a proper public broadcaster once in awhile, while at the same time doing something innovative in it market. Being that Bell has had its ties with the CTV network and Shaw has interests in many television network and production properties (through its association with Corus entertainment) I'd have thought they'd be more keen to expand programming on the internet. I guess, however, that would mean people wouldn't have to subscribe to their delivery services to view their content...an you know it's all about "vertical markets".
There is definitely something to be said for a guy who has vision, and the force of personality to see it through.
Theo de Raadt has a "force of personality" and a definite vision (or at least a strong opinion on everything). He is an abrasive person sometimes (OK, most times), but one thing he and other "strong personalities" in the Free software community are NOT are secretive, nor are they particularly dictatorial. They put it ALL out on the table and they also do accept input from and collaborate with others who are like minded.
Jobs and the Apple culture are hard to pin down, but you are in deep denial if you think they are NOT evil to some degree, or all the evil they've done is somehow justified. Jobs has been known to be quite arbitrary in imposing his "vision" on products. It is possible to impart vision without coercion or intimidation, but Jobs does the latter far more often than he needs to. An early example was during the development of the original Mac. He saw a "release candidate" main board and thought it looked ugly because the ICs were not spaced evenly (the DRAM was "crammed together" and he wanted to space it out more evenly). He wanted the Mac to be attractive inside and out. However, Jobs was not well versed on RFI reduction, which was the reason behind the layout. Jobs' layout changes cost a bit of unnecessary time and money because they HAD to fabricate the board to show him it wouldn't work.
The other thing is that the "proprietary bug" still haunts Apple, even as it is a relatively generous contributor to open source. Much of what Apple contributes is in order to abide by the GPL or GPL-like licensing. Derivatives of BSD works are not so generously shared, and much of what is built on top of the Free software foundations is completely closed (where is the source for the iPhone? Why are they so reluctant to provide APIs? Why have they played games with the Konqueror and webkit developers in the past?). They might be running Intel hardware that is more like other PCs than ever before, but they still are very careful to put in legal and technical restrictions to make sure MacOS stays on Apple-built hardware. They also have gone to great lengths to make sure iTunes remains iPod only. It's a top-to-bottom, all-encompassing all-Apple vision in Jobs' head. It is in fact very very similar to BillG's vision of computing, only prettier and more tastefully done, and BillG's less of a dictator.
When a pair of linksys routers, 2 old and free Dish network dishes and $30.00 worth of parts can to the exact same thing.
You don't even need to do such a hack job either. My parents receive 2 to 3 Mb/s rural internet service over a distance in excess of 10 km using off-the-shelf equipment provided by their ISP, purchased for much less than $500 about 5 years ago. I even think that the bandwidth is limited upstream of the wireless link (ie. the wireless technology is capable of more than the bandwidth they've been apportioned)
I'm not entirely sure what there is to be excited about concerning this new Intel product. It is hardly revolutionary--it is merely an incremental improvement in technology that has been rolled out in many rural locations all over the continent for a few years now.
How is this different from a pantent troll? Create a program, GPL it, wait for some company to use it, and sue?
Well, the biggest difference is that it is 100% UNLIKE a patent troll because it is a COPYRIGHT case, not a patent case. But lets look at this from a more philosophical perspective.
Patent trolls don't create any new intellectual property. Almost the entire energy of a patent troll business like Acacia is to buy up obscure patents, often of questionable validity, for ideas that are already widely implemented. Once the patent is bought they then go out and sue the pants of the people who actually did the real "creating". In this case, the authors of Busybox worked hard and have dedicated countless hours of time supporting and improving their creation and have been courteous enough to offer their creation under very generous terms. Instead of a monetary obligation in return for the right to use Busybox, they instead asked that any derivative works or redistributions require the obligation of source code redistribution.
Patent trolls rely on deception and hidden information as their business model. They look for "hidden treasures" where a little known patent could potentially be broadly applied across a huge number of implementations developed by unsuspecting inventors. Busybox is most definitely NOT obscure, and its terms-of-use are most definitely VERY well known and even more easily understood than most EULAs used in the industry. The authors of Busybox and the SFLC did nothing at all to deceive anyone or trick them into using the software improperly.
This is basically an example of why intellectual property rights are so important. The Free software community needs to have the same tools (weapons) at their disposal to defend the freedom of their software as the "mafIAA" wield to try to restrict and control information.
Seriously, this is basic supply and demand at work (more would-'ve-bought HD-DVD buyers now go for BluRay)
This isn't exactly supply and demand; there was some not-so-ethical market manipulation going on here:
* Movie studios were bought off to supply content in blu-ray over HD-DVD in desperation to catch up in selection. * Blu-Ray hardware manufacturers (including and especially SONY with their PS3) supplied distributers and retailers with many models at prices below the cost of manufacture, and gave MSRPs that allowed for more dollars per unit in margins. HD-DVD hardware makers were not nearly as aggressive as they were cheaper to make in the first place, but margins on an HD-DVD unit were smaller so stores made less profit. * Wal-Mart was encourages to use its huge, nearly monopoly-status position in the industry to steer the market towards Blu-Ray.
Toshiba and friends simply didn't play dirty-enough pool, especially in terms of bribing movie studios (the biggest downfall). In any case, the abrupt increase in prices isn't to do with a spike in demand--the demand for HD video players hasn't jumped THAT abruptly to account for it. The main reason is that they've killed the competition and now the manufacturers have decided they want to make decent money on Blu-Ray, instead of barely scraping by or even losing money dumping units...soooo, they've abruptly raised the wholesale cost and now retailers are passing on that cost (they have to--it is lean times for retail right now).
That's what happens when an over-engineered, unnecessarily-complicated technology out-markets what in some ways is a more elegant solution.
violence is only wrong because it hurts others. If it doesn't hurt others, it's not wrong, and it's not violence.
You seem to be an authority on stupid statements. "Doing something that hurts someone else" is not the definition of violence--not the sole definition. It can mean any depiction of aggressive, forceful behaviour and can be against any person, animal or property, real or imagined. When Ballmer throws a chair through a computer monitor, it is a violent act, even if it isn't directed physically at Torvalds or Jobs.
So you contend that there is no such thing as a violent movie, or violent video games, because nobody is hurt creating the depiction on-screen.
Also note I never explicitly said violent behaviour was wrong. It's human nature to want to release aggression. Violent action movies or games can be fun. It's just like alcohol--aggressive or violent behavior, channeled appropriately, can be a great stress reliever. However, just as with alcoholism people can get addicted to violent behaviour. The key is also the motivation behind it. Is it mere entertainment, competition, blowing off steam as in a game of football, or play Halo, or whatever? Ir is there a high off of hurting others that are weaker or getting even at the world for being slighted in some way? Does your life revolve around violent behaviour? Do you view the world with contempt? Then it is bad.
Also, who is to judge whether there are bad consequences. It "doesn't hurt anyone" is a lame excuse used to justify morally wrong behaviour all the time Sometimes the RIGHT thing can hurt (police and soldiers often protect innocent by causing injury or even death to others who are a danger). Sometimes doing the WRONG think doesn't seem to hurt anyone. Graffiti and many other forms of property destruction don't hurt anyone by many people's standards but it diminishes the enjoyment of the community and shows complete disrespect for others' property.
If people who watch R-rated games tend to be more violent than those who don't, are the movies making them more violent than they otherwise would have been?
It's not impossible, or even overly difficult, for egghead researchers to answer this question...but it IS more work. Besides, a mere correlation seems to be all that is required for making voter-friendly knee-jerk policy, so very few people or institutions ever request or fund the extra work required.
Playing violent games (or watching violent films or whatever media you're consuming) does not cause violent behaviour...it IS violent behaviour. I don't think it matters if you kick your neighbour's dog, drown your sister's cat, stab some random person you've picked a drunken fight with at the local pub or blew the head off of some virtual being in a video game...it's the same kind of violent behaviour on different scales. There are laws concerning all these violent behaviours and it ultimately doesn't eliminate them.
As such, I think that the heavy consumption of violent video games and other media, beyond some reasonable level, is more a symptom of psychological issues rather than the cause of anything. I think that in large part that is because children's upbringings are more institutionally-influenced than ever. When I was growing up we were just starting to see the "latch key kids" phenomenon come to the forefront, where both parents worked and were not home for a couple of hours after kids got home from school. It was still commonplace for one parent to be home, or at least stay home until the kids were old enough to be "latch key kids". The community was more friendly too--more people were at home during the day, you knew more neighbours, kids ventured outside and interactions were more personal...and so on. Kids were brought up, at least in the early years, by PARENTS and by the immediate community.
Today, people feel entitled to more luxuries than ever before, governments feel entitled to be bigger and to have more of your tax money than ever before and the marketplace feels entitled to more of the rest of your money. As a result both/all of the adults in a family feel it is required of them to work as much as possible. As soon as parental leave is over it's back to work and put the baby in a daycare. The daycare worker raises the child for the bulk of the day...then the teachers. Extra-curricular activities are super-structured (school-programmes and such), and otherwise activities are passive and institutional. "Professionals" like coaches and programme managers and TV writers are too often the only influential people who shape young minds as parents all too often get self absorbed in furthering careers, financing giant houses with upside-down mortgages, making payments on the new car and so on.
Some people subscribe to the "Lord of the Flies" view, that left morally unguided humans will create a chaotic and violent society. I think that "institutional guidance" is even worse than total non-guidance in some ways. Perhaps we are inherently selfish, but with child care and educational professionals all espousing "child centric" theories and methods we seem to be ENCOURAGING this selfishness to the point of breeding little sociopathic tyrants. It's all about what the child wants and fulfilling all the child's desires and instilling any sense of empathy or concern for others of any kind is seriously neglected. Most kids can cope but there is a segment of the population, whether through a bad home environment or some peculiar wiring of the brain, become DANGEROUSLY sociopathic and tyrannical.
As such kids grow up they evolve from being selfish in the pursuit of gratification to being gratified at the expense of others. They get high off feeling superior. Kids these days can use some monstrously cruel emotional torture along with the escalating physical violence. I think that addiction to violent games is one step on this path, just like bullying peers or torturing animals. It is just as futil
Yet when MS puts out a competitor to Java, and now Flash, it's "why do we need more than one?"
Silverlight is great! Silverlight is cool! It's a great choice! IS it a choice though? Can I run it on Opera yet? HOw complete is Moonlight on Linux? Can I see Silverlight apps on Firefox on Linux? What about Epiphany or Konqueror? What about 64-bit or other non IA32 architectures?
With Java, and with REAL standards, choice is encouraged. SUN invented Java but IBM builds great gobs of it and has its own JVM. It runs on my Nokia phone, and ran on my old Motorola. I have a choice of JVMs I can run on a choice of OSes and through nearly any browser and with any vendors products..NET? Silverlight? Pretty limited choice there. There is a grand total of one implementation of.NET for Windows and one for Linux/UNIX (That being Mono--and it only implements a subset of what the MSFT.NET framework does). Their specs are not widely deployed, they are not "clean" intellectual property, their developer tools, while admittedly of fairly good quality, are limited in choice.
We already have a proprietary, de-facto pseudo-standard with spotty cross-platform support (ie. limited choice) in Flash. Why do we have to have more non-choices in Silverlight? We need a platform that a) doesn't suck AND b) enables us to have choices. Silverlight has its enticements around point a) but I remain unconvinced at this point about b).
Like it or not, Flash is the established de-facto standard for internet video. Works well for me on Linux, by the way.
What does flash's widespread use have to do with its suckage factor? Just because everyone uses it doean't mean it's good. Everyone used to smoke cigarettes--that doesn't mean they were any less harmful for you back then. Flash is to the internet as cigarettes are to the lungs--unhealthy, cancer causing, and laced with harmful toxins.
Flash works like crap on my AMD64 Linux box, by the way.
So you are saying that something which doesn't even exist yet except as a pie-in-the-sky proposal is the "best hope?"
I agree with you on one point--the idea that the HTML5 video element is our "best hope" is indeed laughable, chiefly because HTML5 as a standard is laughable (at least at this point, particularly its backers approach to building a standard). However I have to contend that our "best hope" is indeed something that does not yet exist. Flash is completely hopeless, and there are but the dimmest glimmers of hope in Silverlight, because prospects of it becoming a proper standard are still "pie-in-the-sky"
Sorry, this proposal fails because it requires everyone, everywhere, to change all at once.
Microsoft seems to hope that people will change "everything all at once". Meaningfully adopting Silverlight over existing technologies requires that kind of buy-in for most situations.
Detailed, accurate, sensible answer to the "why switch" argument. Nice to see such a post, even if it reads like a Microsoft brochure, because there seems to be a misunderstanding of what Silverlight is trying to offer. I'd like to provide some counterpoints, because ther are some important reasons why software architects may wish to completely avoid using Silverlight in their applications.
1) Performance features - for example an application in silverlight that pulls HD image formats in small chunks, allowing you to zoom into 100mb images instantly.
A lot can be done to move forward standards-based platforms without completely re-inventing the wheel Optimisations made in new browser releases can make Javascript run significantly faster, and Google has demonstrated the ability in its Maps app and elsewhere that quite adequate performance can even be rung out of currently-released AJAX clients.
2) HD Video - that is VC1 compliant as well. Also the ability to support live and multi-cast streaming of HD Video (great for lowbandwidth servers hosting live events, and still providing an HD video of the event.)
One would expect MSFT to support VC1 as it is their own invention. Kinda makes me wince though, because VC1 is kind of like Silverlight--invented by MSFT becasue they wanted to be in control of something, even though H.264 was already there and some might say is superior to VC1 (IIRC H.264 can produce video of the same quality with a slightly lower bandwidth requirement). In any case, when it takes 10 to 20 MbPS (or more) to stream at HD quality Id have to say it is a stretch to say this HD support could be very useful to "low bandwidth servers". I guess it's a bit of personal bias, but I've never considered VC1 to be a properly conceived standard.
3) Easier - By the nature of how Silverlight is designed it is easier to design for and work with. You are basically just managaging Vista type XAML from WPF. No secret formats, etc.
This is a welcome change from the way MSFT has done things since the introduction of Windows (from the API to DCOM, MSFT has come up with too many head-scratchers to count). My concern is that the ease-of-application is just nice juicy bait for the trap. What encumbrances are there to using "Vista type XAML"? Will MSFT demand a license fee if I use silverlight "commercially"? Are patents involved? Can I license my Silverlight apps using GPL? If I want to use it with Linux (Moonlight) without fear of legal reprecussions am I required to obtain it only through Novell? To me, the technical ease-of-use is somewhat offset by the legal complexities that might surround the use of this platform if you aren't exacly an ally of MSFT.
4) Agnostic programming - Silverlight you not only get a rich vector/bitmap based environment, but it is completely language agnostic and you can use anything from C# to VB to Python.
Semantics here, but Silverlight is NOT "completely" language agnostic. It is.NET CLR-centric, and thus you must use.NET dialects of all these languages. If you are not a.NET programmer you will undoubtedly still experience SOME learning curve. That curve isn't there for MSFT platform developers, but some people who do Flash and AJAX and Java in web-based applications do indeed work on MACOS X or other UNIX-like environments. To those people it is STILL presenting something new and unfamiliar.
7) Back to Performance - Flash is a dog on non-Windows OSes. So far Silverlight is showing to be semi-equally fast on Windows and OS X, with low memory consumption on both. The same Flash applet running on Windows could use a couple of MB and running on OS X jump to 30MB and peg the CPU. Flash is NOT as crossplatform as developers would like to lead people to believe because of performance issues like this.
I agree with you on this one. The elephant in the room is Moonlight (you do mot mention Linux--a rather glaring omission gi
Hasbro and Mattel are using TRADEMARKS in their action and that is all.
Scrabble has never been patented. The person who invented the came in 1931 was denied a patent because apparently the idea wasn't a novel-enough departure from crossword and letter-scramble puzzle games. I guess back then people had to have REAL inventions to be granted patents. That discussion is moot anyways as patents would've long since expired.
Scrabulous does not violate copyright either. They do not reproduce the manual, nor did they do anything like scan in the board.
Scrabulous definitely could violate trademarks however. The visual appearance of the board could be registered as a trademark, and being the first five letters of the game's name are identical to the trademarked name they can make an argument the name violates trademarks too. Whether it is right or wrong to pursue legal action, trademark law is what it is. Trademarks have no lifetime limits like copyrights and patents--they can last forever. However, to enjoy the rights granted by a registered trademark the owner is responsible for enforcing it. If trademarks are unenforced for a number of years then they are considered abandoned and the words and images can be mimicked by anyone by any means.
The law basically forces Mattel ad Hasbro to take action of some kind. If they did not, then they'd lose their rights to scrabble as it appears now, and competitors would be allowed not only to make their own online knockoffs, they could reproduce the board game, complete with the "scrabble" name. Now, was it the RIGHT action to be threatening? I don't think so. I don't think it would "set a bad precedent" to have approached these developers with an agreement on trademark licensing and so forth. These brothers in India were not motivated by malicious intent or even profit; they were merely Scrabble enthusiasts and were enterprising enough to adapt the game into a Facebook application.
It's somewhat analogous to hackers discovering system vulnerabilities and exploiting them out of curiosity, just to create mischief, and later being hired on by owners of those systems as a consultant. It has happened before and it hasn't set a bad precident; there aren't huge legions of hackers out there deploying mass exploits in hopes of extorting employment out of their actions. I think it's simply a strategic misstep on Mattel and Hasbro's parts, as they seem to trail the trends in terms of on-line business.
If there are benefits to using the extra energy then it isn't wasted energy. That said, there is no conclusive proof that productivity is increased substantially by adjusting clocks so that people get up an hour earlier in the morning during non winter months.
Morning hours of daylight are useless to me considering that I am either at work or on the way to work.
Jurisdictions with large rural populations (such as Saskatchewan) tend to resist DST because morning daylight hours ARE useful, because work is outdoors and working in the morning light is more comfortable than in the hotter afternoon daylight.
I can actually use after-work hours of daylight to do something enjoyable.
I can probably speak for a lot of Canadians when I say we have TOO MUCH DAMN DAYLIGHT ALREADY in the summer. I don't even live THAT far north and with DST the sun sets after 10 PM in June and July. It can be hard for some people to get to sleep early enough when it stays light for so long.
DST should be extended year-round.
Fine enough for me because it's annoying (and in some cases dangerous, as traffic accident studies have shown) to switch from standard to daylight savings time. Howeverm, if we must have DST, then it should be reversed, especially in Canada. It makes no sense at all to "save daylight" during the time of year when dyalight is in excess. OTOH, in December it is pitch black by quitting time. If we enacted DST in the winter months then the sun would set at 17:30 instead of 16:30 and thousands of workers would be able to leave the office before it is completely dark. If DST is about "enjoying after-work hours" then this would make way more sense.
...it's real, and it's a very old idea. Atari created a very similar device 25 years ago. It was crude by today's standards (you very nearly had to move your eyebrows for it to register movement) but it did work. Atari had working prototypes at a CES in the early 1980s--people could play pong and breakout with the "mindlink". It was a crude form of the very same technology used here, though it was much less sensitive and required a bit of muscle movement for it to pick up neural impulses. The technology was developed for myoelectric prosthetic limbs and has matured greatly since those days.
Atari's MindLink controller was never released to production though...testers often experienced tension headaches after using the device for extended sessions and it was not very precise. Beyond pong and breakout and other simple games it was not very effective because users had trouble coping with more than simple linear control. Also, furhter refinement of the product was abandoned as this was around the time of the Tramiel takeover (and Tramiel was known not to ever be enthusiastic about the potential of home video game consoles vs. low cost home computers) and the big console industry shakeout made for a lot of vapourware from all industry players.
Certainly with increased processing power and better sensor technology in the past 25 years there could be much more potential in such a device, especially for those who have physical disabilities that prevent them from effectively using keyboards and mice. This isn't April fools or even a new idea, and it employs passive sensors (they do not transmit neural impulses--only detect the ones you generate) so a "blue screen of death" won't really kill you, and if you get a good fragging it won't fry your brain (the feedback is only visual--what is on the screen).
There is nothing insightful here. "Hard to install", "hard to use", "hard to maintain"....wow...criticisms of Linux that were starting to get old and tired and irrelevant five years ago and there are STILL hundreds of tired old posts on these topics. JUST STOP ALREADY! The points were made, they have been addressed, they are irrelevant. NEXT!
Let me ask you something, how is the average joe going to find out what in the heck Synaptic is if they don't know enough about computer to know the difference between downloading and installing?
Why would the "average user" need to know what synaptic is? All they need to know is how to click "Add or remove programs" off a pull-down menu in contemporary Linux-based OSes (Ubuntu in particular really has me impressed actually). It actually seems easier than the windows equivalent in my opinion. In Windows, I've encountered such baffling things as "installing windows installer"...you have to install an installer before installing your program? WTF? Why? In Ubuntu the installer is there and it just works. There is no "dependency hell" either; the Canonical folks have packaged everything up for you and if the program you want needs another package it gives a nice little reminder that what you selected uses such-and-such other program so it'll install both...and it tells you before you click OK.
For that matter, why would an average user even need to know the difference between download and install with the big Linux OSes anymore either? In Ubuntu it all happens at once anyways.
You identify 2 issues with Linux...two tired, old obsolete issues:
And, while is seems like heresy, Windows has far less installation issues, if only because the hardware is made for it)
Eh, try telling that to someone who actually has to install Windows. Believe me, Windows has installation issues. Average users just don't have to install as much because, MSFT being the monopolist it is, its products are pre-installed...but let me tell you the average PC user most definitely cannot cope with a great deal of issues Windows has...especially during an upgrade. Upgrading NT-kernel based Windows (2000 to XP, XP to Vista) has more issues than upgrading Ubuntu. For one thing, doing an OS upgrade equivalent to the aforementioned upgrade can be done through Ubuntu's equivalent to "windows update"...not the case with Windows. For another, "DRIVER dependency hell" has been a problem for Windows in the past (when my sister upgraded from 2000, the upgrade process left the 2000 drivers in place, and the printer driver crashed continuously until the problem was manually resolved).
It gets worse too--MSFT has a nasty habit of too-quickly obsoleting hardware. Computer peripherals have a notoriously short production lifespan, and discontinued products remain in common use for a long time. This is a big reason why Vista adoption outside of new PC purchases has been pretty dismally slow and why so many people wish to downgrade. Perfectly good printers, scanners, webcams, wireless NICs that are not that old but not made anymore were ignored by MSFT and many XP drivers break in Vista...so in the case of Vista the "hardware was designed for it" is false. Today, Linux has FAR better legacy hardware support than does Windows.
Then there is this little gem:
fanboys who don't understand how someone can't figure out how to use a command line tool with the proper switch options in order to enable their 'insert absolutely necessary component of a computer here' so they can use Linux
Often when I point out a shortcoming of Windows I get a MSFT fanboy chiming in with a "well you're just ignorant...just open a command prompt/regedit/mmc and....", or defending Windows' inability to load into at least safe mode when you have to replace a motherboard. I related my experience on/. one time about being a victim of the "cheap Chinese bursting capacitor" motherboard issue on my Win2k box...I got a replacement on recall, but
How can you win when you always play a losing hand? They are "bashed if they do" because they're treating intelligent critics as if they're idiots.
Those in-the-know KNOW there is a catch and it's a pretty big catch too: those who use patent-encumbered APIs in FOSS applications will be left alone...until someone uses that FOSS commercially, and then all bets are off and MSFT will be after their protection money again. Those who most want MSFT to provide PROPER interoperability know what a standard is. Barfing out tens of thousands of pages of API specs does not a standard make. A standard is not driven by a single vendor. A standard is vetted by a standards body. A standard is IMPLEMENTABLE (what MSFT has released is a core-dump; nobody's going to be able to provide the kind of interoperability provided by MSFT's native implementations without a monumental investment of time and money to adequately understand what is in the APIs).
This was done because the EU, and even the US DOJ actions of the past, are increasingly forcing their hand, and they've "opened the kimono" under carefully crafted terms that appease regulators (that aren't savvy enough to know what meaningful interoperability entails) yet still ensure MSFT retains the leverage afforded by its market dominance. They're hoping that by sharing in the way they have, and releasing free developer tools and open source (but not Free in the GPL sense) OOXML implementations it will prove enticing enough for FOSS developers to implement something encumbered by MSFT.
Does MSFT really think we are THAT stupid? Do they really think that Free software is still about a bunch of small-time hippies that do it "just for fun"? Sorry, but the likes of IBM and Google are huge corporate backers of Free software projects--it isn't all hippie-geek love or some CS student's hobby anymore. These contributors are not going to want their work encumbered by a MSFT terms and conditions.
There is one interesting double-edged sword in this "MSFT truce": we will have a better idea than ever about what MSFT patents are threatening FOSS. On one hand, having MSFT IP so highly visible is one way they can defend their patents; it is more difficult to plead ignorance. On the other hand, the FOSS community knows which patents to work around in their own applications, and knows which patents to try to have invalidated in court, without pouring over the whole patent database.
Of course, it's always great to see MSFT being more open with information, and some of it might make an interesting read, so it isn't all bad. However this will ultimately do nothing at all to foster real interoperability; whatever benefits realised by the availability of information will be negated by making legal reverse engineering more difficult and by introducing tainted IP into FOSS.
Nobody running a successful LBO firm is stupid enough to make this ridiculous lawsuit the central part of an execution plan.
The Statements in the release are quite lawyerly indeed. The funding is in place, IN PART, to "see SCO's legal claims through to their full conclusion". PJ interprets this to mean "continue to attack Linux", and indeed the deal suggests that is something these investors would like to see returns from: the vast majority of this $100M is not hard cash to be handed over in one lump sum loan, it is a "line of credit" to fund continued operations and part of financing this line of credit would be, IIRC, 17% of any monetary judgments in SCO's favour.
However, I cannot believe that the smart people behind SNCP sincerely think they have a good chance of actually WINNING the lawsuit. I think it's more of a "lottery ticket"--lawyers make sure their butts are covered, and that they'll be able to screw ove...errr I mean "receive compensation" under all circumstances. "Continue to pursue" litigation "to their full conclusion" could very well be code words for "finally put it to rest". They apparently have a plan that includes the legal stuff but haven't released details (and taking SCO private would mean they don't ever have to do so). That plan very likely incorporates (or entirely consists of) a contingency plan. It looks pretty bleak to reverse the decision on copyright ownership, but they can appeal a judgment on royalties owed to Novell and get out of paying tens of millions. The same goes for any counter-suits from the likes of IBM or Red Hat. SNCP may think they have the ability to get SCO out of hot water without paying out as much (or any) money.
In short, their legal strategy might (wisely) be a defensive strategy to cut their losses and move on. To paraphrase that cute song "if I had a (hundred) million dollars", well, I'd "buy me a SCO" too actually, and that would almost be my legal plan, though I'd be more apt to not put too much effort in "cut the losses" and settle out of court. If I was some LBO billionaire dude I'd buy SCO, and when judgment came I'd say "here's your money Novell", and subsequently settle all other disputes quickly. Then I'd promptly GPL UNIXWare and OpenServer and use what's left of the technical people to refocus SCO as a "solutions provider" to target the thousands of SCO users around the world with UNIXWare/OpenServer-to-Linux migration plans. Anything of redeeming value in the newly-GPLed legacy OS products would then be incorporated into a "LinuxWare" distribution tailored to be as close as possible to a drop-in replacement for existing SCO customers.
The background of SNCP and their "middle eastern partners" really make me uncomfortable though. Those stated partners include the Saudi prince who is Bill Gates' investment partner in the Four Seasons hotel chain. These are legally-savvy business tycoons. I cannot see them taking the "Mark Shuttleworth act of benevolency" approach that I'd take. They are no doubt acting with convincing insider knowledge. I think that there might be a few motivators for this investment:
* They might have a convincing legal argument to overturn some of the judgements against them--for example they might be able to retain copyright to at least portions of UNIX, and that would at least allow the IBM lawsuit to move forward and keep the FUD coming for Microsoft.
* They are trying to stem customer migrations to Linux. I have no doubt that even if Microsoft isn't tied to this deal that BillG *is* in some capacity, and he obviously has the betterment of Microsoft in his self interest. The business plan outside the legal battle may be in fact to steer SCO customers towards Microsoft solutions, and perhaps to eventually have MSFT absorb SCO entirely. If you combine that with the first point, that would mean MSFT could end up with some UNIX copyright ownership--a great piece of IP to leverage if you wished to embrace, extend and extinguish *real* UNIX operating systems of all kinds (like
I started using the internet in the last months before the WWW was invented (I told someone that once and they gave me a confused "what does that mean, isn't the web what the internet IS?"...boy times change quickly). I used email to communicate from afar to avoid postage and long distance fees. There was this thing called majordomo on the department's mail server and we could make lists to broadcast announcements...what a concept!
Facebook is fun and all, I guess, but I'm really not sure why the heck we NEED it. What is wrong with everyday ordinary technology we had for years before Facebook? Maintain your own addressbook and use email to communicate. Throw your pics on the web server space your local ISP probably still provides and make your own album, and invite your friends to do the same. What's really sad is how email was allowed to turn into a spam-infested stagnant scum-pond. However, like Lake Erie, efforts have been put into cleaning up the ecosystem that have started to deliver results. With proper spam filtering, domainkeys, etc. you can reduce your spam to 1 a day or even less. Seems far better signal:noise ratio than Facebook's announcements (of course you can turn those off too).
If you are as geeky as I am you can go find an ISP that offers a fixed IP address that allows inbound connections for servers. If being online is that big part of your life then paying $30 to $60 a month for ISP isn't a high cost (no more than cable tv if you put it in perspective). Then you can set up a web server that you and your friends can use as your own personal discussion forum/blog/album. Then, the info you put on your server is controlled by you, who you let access the site is basically up to you, and if you want to take it down you don't have to badger some meathead in some unresponsive customer service dept. to remove your files. This sounds really geeky, but it sure is easier to do than it was back in the "dark-ages" of the 1990's...if you can run the setup CD for Windows XP, you can set up a LAMP server these days.
I run a server as a hobby myself, and prefer to use that as where I put my "online presence" over Facebook or Myspace or whatever. I have accounts with hose sites but I log in on those seldom to never. Of course I got into computers at a time when BBSes were really coming into fashion and 300 baud modems were still commonplace. When you were a geek kid with geek friends you set up your own BBSes to communicate and share files, and when you didn't do that it wasn't uncommon to end up talking with or meeting the sysop in person.
The internet community as a whole needs to remember the culture in those old-school PPS and pre-WWW internet days. Internet technologies and the arrival of broadband was exciting to such people because it could be personally empowering--if we all had half-decent connections into the internet we'd all have the means to "run our own printing presses" without the impossible capital investment. Our BBSes could be supplanted by internet email and our own ftp sites and NNTP servers and gopher pages and this new exciting WWW thing. Some of us thought we could all have our own easy-to-use personal servers the way we ran our own BBSes.
Somewhere in the.com bubble around 2000 that vision seemed to have become lost, and since then it seems there is great pressure to shape the internet into something along the lines of traditional broadcasting. We went from techies setting up their own web servers to early web users tinkering with text editors and primitive HTML editors building their own pages, to a variety of blog sites where people kept online journals, to where we are today where only a small number of online presences are considered "relevant" and people feel that the only way to participate online is through one of these few relevant sites like Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo, Google and MSN. To think we thought the likes of Compuserve, Progidy and Delphi would be made obsolete, never again to return to the same relevance,
...that basically starts with a pre-conceived conclusion and looks for evidence to back it up, I suspect.
The problem is that the net emissions from biofuel production cannot ever be determined accurately---it is totally impossible ot absolutely quanitfy it because it is always a moving target.
The article goes on about rainforest being clear-cut to make way for the production of fuel plants. That kind of land makes really poor land for growing and there is no evidence at all that shows biofuel production has been cited as a reason for clearing a significant amount of new land. The "biofuel lobbyists" are right about one thing; the study is too simplistic to be an accruate assesment of the real net impact of biofuel production. What if the farm equipment itself was powered by biofuels? What if the waste biomass from preparing farmland and growing the crops was recovered and used for power generation? What if we used biomass from the ocean (this is already done on an experimental scale)? Have there been studies on the efficiency of biofuel-powered engines and on the overall emissions (sulphur, particulates and things that not only afect the climate but actually harm our health)? What about the impact of making fuel out of tarsands vs middle-east light sweet crude vs. crude drilled in the Gulf of Mexico? How can they put a number like "92 years of emissions"? It all smells pretty fishy to me.
It's like the argument that biofuels threaten foodstocks. Well, we used Soybeans extensively for food products...and it makes a good biofuel...and plastic...and industrial lubricants...and a host of other things. What is wrong with doing that using corn too? Corn production in the US actually exceeds what the world NEEDS for food by quite a margin, as do the production of many other crops (wheat, etc). These crops have been very cheap since the depression (in fact for decades they went down significantly when adjusted for inflation) and only in the last few years have grain prices been coming up to where they really should be. Sometimes I wonder if there are lobbyists out there for the processed food undustry putting resistance out to any competing demand in order to ensure they can name their own bargain prices for high-fructose corn syrup, bleached and enriched white wheat flour and hydrogenated vegetable oil and keep the margins on twinkie sales up.
Anyways, what is the big surprise here? Burning fuel creates emissions...surprise surprise! When you drive an electric car you are indirectly burning natural gas, or coal, or splitting uranium atoms. When you are using biodiesel you are burning soybeans or canola, along with whatever the equipment used to grow it uses. Same with ethanol except it's corn or switchgrass or sugarcane. Hello...if you want to reduce emmissions DON'T DRIVE SO DAMN MUCH! Get rid of your suburbans and buy a hatchback (a VW Golf diesel is better than a Prius if you don't live in a big city). Better yet, get off your ass and WALK once in a while.
Actually having worked in power plants and refineries and such...I have a hard time believing ANY sort of fuel doesn't have a significant environmental impact. These guys obviously haven't seen how tarsands ar mined, or how much fuel an oil tanker uses, or how much power an offshore drilling platform uses.
Think of it like a cell phone PC Card that can plug into a variety of host devices.
I'm not sure where people got the idea that this phone-gadget was like an oversized SIM card. A SIM card is basically a low-capacity flash-memory card with keys for identity and encryption. This device is basically an entire cellphone, which I understand is functional all on its own at a basic level. The closest thing to this is the W-SIM card which is a SIM with a cellular transceiver welded to its back, but even that lacks the processing power and user-interface that could make it a phone in and of itself.
I think that you clue in even more than these Modu people do though in mentioning "cell phone PC Card". I'd LOVE to have a basic wireless phone device that was in a PC Card form factor. There are "cellular modems" already out there, but it'd be great if you had one with, say, a gig of flash, embedded processor, a 16-key dial pad, a minimal LCD display (just enough for caller ID or to see what you're dialing) and a small battery (removable if possible but not required--Apple solders in batteries on their i-things after all).
A standalone-capable "PC Card cellphone" would be quite appealing without any add-ons as a low-cost phone for basic communications--something my mum would like as all she does is place and receive phone calls. Then you could sell a "RAZR-style" dock in which you could latch your PC Card phone that consisted of a larger full-sized display, a camera and perhaps added battery capacity. The logic to drive the display and a simple camera would be relatively low-cost.
The PC Card form factor would make the possibilities very compelling--you could have this functional stand-alone phone that could slide into your laptop's PC Card slot, transforming it into a combination flash-drive and wireless modem, with the basic phone capabilities still available via a PC application (check your voicemail through your soundcard, do text messaging direct through the phone, etc). Finally, you could have an "EEE PC-style" dock, in which the PC Card phone itself was the processor (actual brains of the computer) but the dock supplied a cheap, sub-notebook form factor just like the EEE PC with similar keyboard, display, battery, extra memory, etc.
I'm surprised how the vast majority of people dismissed this "modular phone" concept right out of hand as being stupid and made redundant by SIM card technology. It ISN'T a SIM card--you'd but a SIM card INSIDE one of these things to activate it. I think the concept is very sound; it's just the proprietary form-factor that makes for a flawed execution.
(hopefully there isn't a patent on this concept--if one is filed from this point on I'd make note of this discussion thread as part of the prior-art on the idea;-)
A damned 'Engineer' in all the title's glory developed my car, and yet half the time a warning light comes on,
Hey, don't blame us, it was the damned software "engineer" who programmed the firmware who came up with how that idiot light worked. Leave it to a software guy to come up with the brilliant idea of illuminating a "check ENGINE" light when the GAS CAP isn't properly tightened;-)
Many millions of dollars later in court, it was verified that the Engineer f'ed up the plans and the construction crews were not at fault.
Doctors eff up too. Sometimes brain surgeons carve out the wrong bit of grey matter, and sometimes they prescribe conflicting medications, etc etc. That doesn't mean the practice of medicine is any less "rigourous". Same goes with engineering. You say "many millions of dollars later in court"...well that means the engineer was taken to task for his malpractice. Contrast that with programming: there has been more than one error in DCOM in the Windows OS that I know for a fact has been directly involved in the cause of many thousands, if not millions, of dollars worth of downtime. Can they sue the programmer at MSFT that wrote the code that failed to perform to the specs as Microsoft published them? Nope--look at the EULA. Can't sue MSFT, and can't sue the programmer. Probably can't even figure out which programmer to take to task.
So care to tell me about the 'rigours' of this so called Engineer?
The ones who pay for the mistakes are the end users, who often demand compensation from the engineers who used automation software that depended on the flawed DCOM code. Then, engineers have to get the programmers to acknowledge their responsibility. Pulling impacted molars is easier than that sometimes.
The 'rigours' of engineering ultimately boil down to that. When a screwup engineer messes up your road, well, someone ultimately sues, a "professional practice" review board will then review the case and has the power not only to make sure you are fired from your present employer, but that you can't design roads for any other employer either. There really isn't that equivalent for Software really established yet. In Canada there is CIPS, but there isn't legislation mandating membership and professional oversight by CIPS for IT professionals--you can go to "MCSE boot camp" and then call yourself a professional IT person. The provinces mandate that to practice engineering you have to belong to the provincial association affiliated with CCPE, and to be a professional member you have to get a degree from an accredited institution, take professional practice exams and log a minimum number of "professional development" hours.
I'm not saying that there is not such thing as "software engineering" or that software development isn't any more "rigourous" than, say, designing a building or automation systems or an automobile's drivetrain. I'm just saying that the regulatory infrastructure is not fully established yet, and indeed it is very important to recognise that software engineering really can be engineering and should be accorded that respect. The CCPE takes the title of "P. Eng." as seriously as medical associations take the title "MD". They don't want people who went out and studied for MCSE certification for a few days or weeks to present themselves as being capable of taking on the responsibilities of an REAL engineer whose conduct can have serious consequences.
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Calling tiered pricing 'cripple-ware' is really being quite silly.
I didn't mention "tiered pricing" anywhere in my post, because I was talking about cripple-ware which is something different.
Generally when different tiers are offered customers get some product or service of extra value, and it costs the company more to add that value. By paying more for a service contract, for example, a customer can phone up and get help at three in the morning from paid on-call staff, or get a part flown in within 'x' hours, or physically "more stuff". SQL Server workgroup edition is cripple-ware. SQL server editions all have a common code base, and it it would've cost MSFT exactly zero to allow 64-bit functionality and use of all installed RAM on the Express and Workgroup editions. Conversely, customers pay significantly more to go from Workgroup to Standard editions, and almost ALL of that extra cost is pure increase in margin.
Oracle cripple-ware because there are different versions with different abilities? Is an IBM mainframe cripple-ware because you didnt pay for all the processors, even if they're in the box sitting in your data center?
Yes on both counts. All it takes to enable the processors is the twist of a screwdriver, or shorting a jumper or twiddling a bit, and that IBM mainframe is then more capable at almost no cost to IBM. Oracle is cripple-ware for the same reasons as MSFT SQL Server. Though in defence of Oracle and IBM, they offer support contracts alongside their enterprise offerings of a calibre that MSFT couldn't ever hope to match right now.
Is RedHat management service crippleware just because you have to pay to use it for more than one machine?
No it isn't, because it is more service and thus more costs involved for Red Hat. More machines==more potential problems==more resources and equipment needed on an on-call basis, 24/7/365.
Running a business doesn't require dishonest cripple-ware strategies, and such a wide-spread use of such strategies seems most prevalent in computing and media (almost exclusively in fact--it is almost never seen in most other industries)
can we not allow people to register for a census on the internet?
;-). But, then again, it IS a federal government operation we're talking about, and poorly specified requirements, unbounded scope-creep and mismanagement know no bounds.
Sure you can. I submitted my census questions via secure website during the last census in 2006...but that was in Canada. It was easier, and certainly less expensive to process (didn't save paper though, because everyone still got the mailer; you could fill it in and mail it back or log in with the information provided in the mailer).
I'm not sure about how it goes in the US, but sending out canvassers only covers about two percent of data collection. Canvassing is only used for the following:
* to survey transient populations--ie. the homeless--
* to collect from remote locations such as the far north, where mail service and internet connectivity are slow, limited or unavailable
* to get data from households who didnt reply via internet or the mailer (and to charge you if you refuse to respond to the mandatory questions on the census)
I can't imagine, even given the 1000 percent larger population, that implementing electronic data collection for canvassers to get that two percent of data would require billions of dollars to implement (the US dollar hasn't depreciated THAT much
There's ONE version, and it's free.
You are right that only the free "express" version of MS SQL Server limits database storage size, but you are missing the point. ALL versions except for the big bad $25,000 "enterprise" version processor license version place artificial limitations on operation at some level by disabling parts of what is largely identical code ("golden screwdriver" engineering). The "workgroup edition" is definitely not free in any sense and is VERY crippled.
* express and workgroup ($740) editions disable 64-bit support
* express and workgroup editions are artivicially limited to using 1 and 3 GB of RAM respectively
* Only developer and enterprise are free from restrictions on number of CPU cores (others limit to between 1 and 4)
* ALL versions place artificial limitations on connectivity ('x' number of users simultaneously via CALs) even if the hardware supports far more.
These are artificial limitations that are ADDED to these versions to cripple functionality; there are no cost savings whatsoever (development, code, packaging, etc) to MSFT by placing these limitations on the lower-cost editions. They are cripple-ware solely to enhance revenue streams of higher-margin editions. THAT is the point he is making.
Modularity in and of itself is hardly a new innovation (MSFT is a very late arrival at that party). Given MSFT's established practice of selling cripple-ware it looks like this is as much (or more) about modular LICENSING than the more modular architecture of the next version of Windows (ie. the prime motivator of making the OS more modular is to facilitate the licensing module). If you have DRM'ed modules for things like "memory management" and "peripheral communications" and whatnot they can drop in/activate crippled versions of those modules, and the DRM in combination with modular architecture could be used to make it easier to enforce subscription models too (for example, you can be dialed back to "Windows Basic" mode if your "ultimate subscription" expires).
SQL Server is the water that made the MSFT slope slippery...
I'm on Bell where I am and it's awful;
Bell/Sympatico internet access is awful almost everywhere. I have seen two reviews and Bell was the bottom-of-the-barrel both times (the Marketplace story was pretty entertaining if lacking in technical details).
If you can go with Shaw or Telus or Rogers you are going to be far better off. Even better than that, there are still a few independents out there that offer superior service and won't throttle your connection so badly (if at all). For example, even though it has to run over some of Telus' gear Radiant Communications offers DSL service that is superior to that Telus themselves provides.
I'm not a huge fan of most of the CBC's programming, but it is encouraging to see them act like a proper public broadcaster once in awhile, while at the same time doing something innovative in it market. Being that Bell has had its ties with the CTV network and Shaw has interests in many television network and production properties (through its association with Corus entertainment) I'd have thought they'd be more keen to expand programming on the internet. I guess, however, that would mean people wouldn't have to subscribe to their delivery services to view their content...an you know it's all about "vertical markets".
There is definitely something to be said for a guy who has vision, and the force of personality to see it through.
Theo de Raadt has a "force of personality" and a definite vision (or at least a strong opinion on everything). He is an abrasive person sometimes (OK, most times), but one thing he and other "strong personalities" in the Free software community are NOT are secretive, nor are they particularly dictatorial. They put it ALL out on the table and they also do accept input from and collaborate with others who are like minded.
Jobs and the Apple culture are hard to pin down, but you are in deep denial if you think they are NOT evil to some degree, or all the evil they've done is somehow justified. Jobs has been known to be quite arbitrary in imposing his "vision" on products. It is possible to impart vision without coercion or intimidation, but Jobs does the latter far more often than he needs to. An early example was during the development of the original Mac. He saw a "release candidate" main board and thought it looked ugly because the ICs were not spaced evenly (the DRAM was "crammed together" and he wanted to space it out more evenly). He wanted the Mac to be attractive inside and out. However, Jobs was not well versed on RFI reduction, which was the reason behind the layout. Jobs' layout changes cost a bit of unnecessary time and money because they HAD to fabricate the board to show him it wouldn't work.
The other thing is that the "proprietary bug" still haunts Apple, even as it is a relatively generous contributor to open source. Much of what Apple contributes is in order to abide by the GPL or GPL-like licensing. Derivatives of BSD works are not so generously shared, and much of what is built on top of the Free software foundations is completely closed (where is the source for the iPhone? Why are they so reluctant to provide APIs? Why have they played games with the Konqueror and webkit developers in the past?). They might be running Intel hardware that is more like other PCs than ever before, but they still are very careful to put in legal and technical restrictions to make sure MacOS stays on Apple-built hardware. They also have gone to great lengths to make sure iTunes remains iPod only. It's a top-to-bottom, all-encompassing all-Apple vision in Jobs' head. It is in fact very very similar to BillG's vision of computing, only prettier and more tastefully done, and BillG's less of a dictator.
When a pair of linksys routers, 2 old and free Dish network dishes and $30.00 worth of parts can to the exact same thing.
You don't even need to do such a hack job either. My parents receive 2 to 3 Mb/s rural internet service over a distance in excess of 10 km using off-the-shelf equipment provided by their ISP, purchased for much less than $500 about 5 years ago. I even think that the bandwidth is limited upstream of the wireless link (ie. the wireless technology is capable of more than the bandwidth they've been apportioned)
I'm not entirely sure what there is to be excited about concerning this new Intel product. It is hardly revolutionary--it is merely an incremental improvement in technology that has been rolled out in many rural locations all over the continent for a few years now.
How is this different from a pantent troll? Create a program, GPL it, wait for some company to use it, and sue?
Well, the biggest difference is that it is 100% UNLIKE a patent troll because it is a COPYRIGHT case, not a patent case. But lets look at this from a more philosophical perspective.
Patent trolls don't create any new intellectual property. Almost the entire energy of a patent troll business like Acacia is to buy up obscure patents, often of questionable validity, for ideas that are already widely implemented. Once the patent is bought they then go out and sue the pants of the people who actually did the real "creating". In this case, the authors of Busybox worked hard and have dedicated countless hours of time supporting and improving their creation and have been courteous enough to offer their creation under very generous terms. Instead of a monetary obligation in return for the right to use Busybox, they instead asked that any derivative works or redistributions require the obligation of source code redistribution.
Patent trolls rely on deception and hidden information as their business model. They look for "hidden treasures" where a little known patent could potentially be broadly applied across a huge number of implementations developed by unsuspecting inventors. Busybox is most definitely NOT obscure, and its terms-of-use are most definitely VERY well known and even more easily understood than most EULAs used in the industry. The authors of Busybox and the SFLC did nothing at all to deceive anyone or trick them into using the software improperly.
This is basically an example of why intellectual property rights are so important. The Free software community needs to have the same tools (weapons) at their disposal to defend the freedom of their software as the "mafIAA" wield to try to restrict and control information.
Seriously, this is basic supply and demand at work (more would-'ve-bought HD-DVD
buyers now go for BluRay)
This isn't exactly supply and demand; there was some not-so-ethical market manipulation going on here:
* Movie studios were bought off to supply content in blu-ray over HD-DVD in desperation to catch up in selection.
* Blu-Ray hardware manufacturers (including and especially SONY with their PS3) supplied distributers and retailers with many models at prices below the cost of manufacture, and gave MSRPs that allowed for more dollars per unit in margins. HD-DVD hardware makers were not nearly as aggressive as they were cheaper to make in the first place, but margins on an HD-DVD unit were smaller so stores made less profit.
* Wal-Mart was encourages to use its huge, nearly monopoly-status position in the industry to steer the market towards Blu-Ray.
Toshiba and friends simply didn't play dirty-enough pool, especially in terms of bribing movie studios (the biggest downfall). In any case, the abrupt increase in prices isn't to do with a spike in demand--the demand for HD video players hasn't jumped THAT abruptly to account for it. The main reason is that they've killed the competition and now the manufacturers have decided they want to make decent money on Blu-Ray, instead of barely scraping by or even losing money dumping units...soooo, they've abruptly raised the wholesale cost and now retailers are passing on that cost (they have to--it is lean times for retail right now).
That's what happens when an over-engineered, unnecessarily-complicated technology out-markets what in some ways is a more elegant solution.
violence is only wrong because it hurts others. If it doesn't hurt others, it's not wrong, and it's not violence.
You seem to be an authority on stupid statements. "Doing something that hurts someone else" is not the definition of violence--not the sole definition. It can mean any depiction of aggressive, forceful behaviour and can be against any person, animal or property, real or imagined. When Ballmer throws a chair through a computer monitor, it is a violent act, even if it isn't directed physically at Torvalds or Jobs.
So you contend that there is no such thing as a violent movie, or violent video games, because nobody is hurt creating the depiction on-screen.
Also note I never explicitly said violent behaviour was wrong. It's human nature to want to release aggression. Violent action movies or games can be fun. It's just like alcohol--aggressive or violent behavior, channeled appropriately, can be a great stress reliever. However, just as with alcoholism people can get addicted to violent behaviour. The key is also the motivation behind it. Is it mere entertainment, competition, blowing off steam as in a game of football, or play Halo, or whatever? Ir is there a high off of hurting others that are weaker or getting even at the world for being slighted in some way? Does your life revolve around violent behaviour? Do you view the world with contempt? Then it is bad.
Also, who is to judge whether there are bad consequences. It "doesn't hurt anyone" is a lame excuse used to justify morally wrong behaviour all the time Sometimes the RIGHT thing can hurt (police and soldiers often protect innocent by causing injury or even death to others who are a danger). Sometimes doing the WRONG think doesn't seem to hurt anyone. Graffiti and many other forms of property destruction don't hurt anyone by many people's standards but it diminishes the enjoyment of the community and shows complete disrespect for others' property.
If people who watch R-rated games tend to be more violent than those who don't, are the movies making them more violent than they otherwise would have been?
It's not impossible, or even overly difficult, for egghead researchers to answer this question...but it IS more work. Besides, a mere correlation seems to be all that is required for making voter-friendly knee-jerk policy, so very few people or institutions ever request or fund the extra work required.
Playing violent games (or watching violent films or whatever media you're consuming) does not cause violent behaviour...it IS violent behaviour. I don't think it matters if you kick your neighbour's dog, drown your sister's cat, stab some random person you've picked a drunken fight with at the local pub or blew the head off of some virtual being in a video game...it's the same kind of violent behaviour on different scales. There are laws concerning all these violent behaviours and it ultimately doesn't eliminate them.
As such, I think that the heavy consumption of violent video games and other media, beyond some reasonable level, is more a symptom of psychological issues rather than the cause of anything. I think that in large part that is because children's upbringings are more institutionally-influenced than ever. When I was growing up we were just starting to see the "latch key kids" phenomenon come to the forefront, where both parents worked and were not home for a couple of hours after kids got home from school. It was still commonplace for one parent to be home, or at least stay home until the kids were old enough to be "latch key kids". The community was more friendly too--more people were at home during the day, you knew more neighbours, kids ventured outside and interactions were more personal...and so on. Kids were brought up, at least in the early years, by PARENTS and by the immediate community.
Today, people feel entitled to more luxuries than ever before, governments feel entitled to be bigger and to have more of your tax money than ever before and the marketplace feels entitled to more of the rest of your money. As a result both/all of the adults in a family feel it is required of them to work as much as possible. As soon as parental leave is over it's back to work and put the baby in a daycare. The daycare worker raises the child for the bulk of the day...then the teachers. Extra-curricular activities are super-structured (school-programmes and such), and otherwise activities are passive and institutional. "Professionals" like coaches and programme managers and TV writers are too often the only influential people who shape young minds as parents all too often get self absorbed in furthering careers, financing giant houses with upside-down mortgages, making payments on the new car and so on.
Some people subscribe to the "Lord of the Flies" view, that left morally unguided humans will create a chaotic and violent society. I think that "institutional guidance" is even worse than total non-guidance in some ways. Perhaps we are inherently selfish, but with child care and educational professionals all espousing "child centric" theories and methods we seem to be ENCOURAGING this selfishness to the point of breeding little sociopathic tyrants. It's all about what the child wants and fulfilling all the child's desires and instilling any sense of empathy or concern for others of any kind is seriously neglected. Most kids can cope but there is a segment of the population, whether through a bad home environment or some peculiar wiring of the brain, become DANGEROUSLY sociopathic and tyrannical.
As such kids grow up they evolve from being selfish in the pursuit of gratification to being gratified at the expense of others. They get high off feeling superior. Kids these days can use some monstrously cruel emotional torture along with the escalating physical violence. I think that addiction to violent games is one step on this path, just like bullying peers or torturing animals. It is just as futil
Yet when MS puts out a competitor to Java, and now Flash, it's "why do we need more than one?"
.NET? Silverlight? Pretty limited choice there. There is a grand total of one implementation of .NET for Windows and one for Linux/UNIX (That being Mono--and it only implements a subset of what the MSFT .NET framework does). Their specs are not widely deployed, they are not "clean" intellectual property, their developer tools, while admittedly of fairly good quality, are limited in choice.
Silverlight is great! Silverlight is cool! It's a great choice! IS it a choice though? Can I run it on Opera yet? HOw complete is Moonlight on Linux? Can I see Silverlight apps on Firefox on Linux? What about Epiphany or Konqueror? What about 64-bit or other non IA32 architectures?
With Java, and with REAL standards, choice is encouraged. SUN invented Java but IBM builds great gobs of it and has its own JVM. It runs on my Nokia phone, and ran on my old Motorola. I have a choice of JVMs I can run on a choice of OSes and through nearly any browser and with any vendors products.
We already have a proprietary, de-facto pseudo-standard with spotty cross-platform support (ie. limited choice) in Flash. Why do we have to have more non-choices in Silverlight? We need a platform that a) doesn't suck AND b) enables us to have choices. Silverlight has its enticements around point a) but I remain unconvinced at this point about b).
Like it or not, Flash is the established de-facto standard for internet video. Works well for me on Linux, by the way.
What does flash's widespread use have to do with its suckage factor? Just because everyone uses it doean't mean it's good. Everyone used to smoke cigarettes--that doesn't mean they were any less harmful for you back then. Flash is to the internet as cigarettes are to the lungs--unhealthy, cancer causing, and laced with harmful toxins.
Flash works like crap on my AMD64 Linux box, by the way.
So you are saying that something which doesn't even exist yet except as a pie-in-the-sky proposal is the "best hope?"
I agree with you on one point--the idea that the HTML5 video element is our "best hope" is indeed laughable, chiefly because HTML5 as a standard is laughable (at least at this point, particularly its backers approach to building a standard). However I have to contend that our "best hope" is indeed something that does not yet exist. Flash is completely hopeless, and there are but the dimmest glimmers of hope in Silverlight, because prospects of it becoming a proper standard are still "pie-in-the-sky"
Sorry, this proposal fails because it requires everyone, everywhere, to change all at once.
Microsoft seems to hope that people will change "everything all at once". Meaningfully adopting Silverlight over existing technologies requires that kind of buy-in for most situations.
Detailed, accurate, sensible answer to the "why switch" argument. Nice to see such a post, even if it reads like a Microsoft brochure, because there seems to be a misunderstanding of what Silverlight is trying to offer. I'd like to provide some counterpoints, because ther are some important reasons why software architects may wish to completely avoid using Silverlight in their applications.
.NET CLR-centric, and thus you must use .NET dialects of all these languages. If you are not a .NET programmer you will undoubtedly still experience SOME learning curve. That curve isn't there for MSFT platform developers, but some people who do Flash and AJAX and Java in web-based applications do indeed work on MACOS X or other UNIX-like environments. To those people it is STILL presenting something new and unfamiliar.
1) Performance features - for example an application in silverlight that pulls HD image formats in small chunks, allowing you to zoom into 100mb images instantly.
A lot can be done to move forward standards-based platforms without completely re-inventing the wheel Optimisations made in new browser releases can make Javascript run significantly faster, and Google has demonstrated the ability in its Maps app and elsewhere that quite adequate performance can even be rung out of currently-released AJAX clients.
2) HD Video - that is VC1 compliant as well. Also the ability to support live and multi-cast streaming of HD Video (great for lowbandwidth servers hosting live events, and still providing an HD video of the event.)
One would expect MSFT to support VC1 as it is their own invention. Kinda makes me wince though, because VC1 is kind of like Silverlight--invented by MSFT becasue they wanted to be in control of something, even though H.264 was already there and some might say is superior to VC1 (IIRC H.264 can produce video of the same quality with a slightly lower bandwidth requirement). In any case, when it takes 10 to 20 MbPS (or more) to stream at HD quality Id have to say it is a stretch to say this HD support could be very useful to "low bandwidth servers". I guess it's a bit of personal bias, but I've never considered VC1 to be a properly conceived standard.
3) Easier - By the nature of how Silverlight is designed it is easier to design for and work with. You are basically just managaging Vista type XAML from WPF. No secret formats, etc.
This is a welcome change from the way MSFT has done things since the introduction of Windows (from the API to DCOM, MSFT has come up with too many head-scratchers to count). My concern is that the ease-of-application is just nice juicy bait for the trap. What encumbrances are there to using "Vista type XAML"? Will MSFT demand a license fee if I use silverlight "commercially"? Are patents involved? Can I license my Silverlight apps using GPL? If I want to use it with Linux (Moonlight) without fear of legal reprecussions am I required to obtain it only through Novell? To me, the technical ease-of-use is somewhat offset by the legal complexities that might surround the use of this platform if you aren't exacly an ally of MSFT.
4) Agnostic programming - Silverlight you not only get a rich vector/bitmap based environment, but it is completely language agnostic and you can use anything from C# to VB to Python.
Semantics here, but Silverlight is NOT "completely" language agnostic. It is
7) Back to Performance - Flash is a dog on non-Windows OSes. So far Silverlight is showing to be semi-equally fast on Windows and OS X, with low memory consumption on both. The same Flash applet running on Windows could use a couple of MB and running on OS X jump to 30MB and peg the CPU. Flash is NOT as crossplatform as developers would like to lead people to believe because of performance issues like this.
I agree with you on this one. The elephant in the room is Moonlight (you do mot mention Linux--a rather glaring omission gi
Hasbro and Mattel are using TRADEMARKS in their action and that is all.
Scrabble has never been patented. The person who invented the came in 1931 was denied a patent because apparently the idea wasn't a novel-enough departure from crossword and letter-scramble puzzle games. I guess back then people had to have REAL inventions to be granted patents. That discussion is moot anyways as patents would've long since expired.
Scrabulous does not violate copyright either. They do not reproduce the manual, nor did they do anything like scan in the board.
Scrabulous definitely could violate trademarks however. The visual appearance of the board could be registered as a trademark, and being the first five letters of the game's name are identical to the trademarked name they can make an argument the name violates trademarks too. Whether it is right or wrong to pursue legal action, trademark law is what it is. Trademarks have no lifetime limits like copyrights and patents--they can last forever. However, to enjoy the rights granted by a registered trademark the owner is responsible for enforcing it. If trademarks are unenforced for a number of years then they are considered abandoned and the words and images can be mimicked by anyone by any means.
The law basically forces Mattel ad Hasbro to take action of some kind. If they did not, then they'd lose their rights to scrabble as it appears now, and competitors would be allowed not only to make their own online knockoffs, they could reproduce the board game, complete with the "scrabble" name. Now, was it the RIGHT action to be threatening? I don't think so. I don't think it would "set a bad precedent" to have approached these developers with an agreement on trademark licensing and so forth. These brothers in India were not motivated by malicious intent or even profit; they were merely Scrabble enthusiasts and were enterprising enough to adapt the game into a Facebook application.
It's somewhat analogous to hackers discovering system vulnerabilities and exploiting them out of curiosity, just to create mischief, and later being hired on by owners of those systems as a consultant. It has happened before and it hasn't set a bad precident; there aren't huge legions of hackers out there deploying mass exploits in hopes of extorting employment out of their actions. I think it's simply a strategic misstep on Mattel and Hasbro's parts, as they seem to trail the trends in terms of on-line business.
DST would be worth it even if it wasted energy.
If there are benefits to using the extra energy then it isn't wasted energy. That said, there is no conclusive proof that productivity is increased substantially by adjusting clocks so that people get up an hour earlier in the morning during non winter months.
Morning hours of daylight are useless to me considering that I am either at work or on the way to work.
Jurisdictions with large rural populations (such as Saskatchewan) tend to resist DST because morning daylight hours ARE useful, because work is outdoors and working in the morning light is more comfortable than in the hotter afternoon daylight.
I can actually use after-work hours of daylight to do something enjoyable.
I can probably speak for a lot of Canadians when I say we have TOO MUCH DAMN DAYLIGHT ALREADY in the summer. I don't even live THAT far north and with DST the sun sets after 10 PM in June and July. It can be hard for some people to get to sleep early enough when it stays light for so long.
DST should be extended year-round.
Fine enough for me because it's annoying (and in some cases dangerous, as traffic accident studies have shown) to switch from standard to daylight savings time. Howeverm, if we must have DST, then it should be reversed, especially in Canada. It makes no sense at all to "save daylight" during the time of year when dyalight is in excess. OTOH, in December it is pitch black by quitting time. If we enacted DST in the winter months then the sun would set at 17:30 instead of 16:30 and thousands of workers would be able to leave the office before it is completely dark. If DST is about "enjoying after-work hours" then this would make way more sense.
...it's real, and it's a very old idea. Atari created a very similar device 25 years ago. It was crude by today's standards (you very nearly had to move your eyebrows for it to register movement) but it did work. Atari had working prototypes at a CES in the early 1980s--people could play pong and breakout with the "mindlink". It was a crude form of the very same technology used here, though it was much less sensitive and required a bit of muscle movement for it to pick up neural impulses. The technology was developed for myoelectric prosthetic limbs and has matured greatly since those days.
Atari's MindLink controller was never released to production though...testers often experienced tension headaches after using the device for extended sessions and it was not very precise. Beyond pong and breakout and other simple games it was not very effective because users had trouble coping with more than simple linear control. Also, furhter refinement of the product was abandoned as this was around the time of the Tramiel takeover (and Tramiel was known not to ever be enthusiastic about the potential of home video game consoles vs. low cost home computers) and the big console industry shakeout made for a lot of vapourware from all industry players.
Certainly with increased processing power and better sensor technology in the past 25 years there could be much more potential in such a device, especially for those who have physical disabilities that prevent them from effectively using keyboards and mice. This isn't April fools or even a new idea, and it employs passive sensors (they do not transmit neural impulses--only detect the ones you generate) so a "blue screen of death" won't really kill you, and if you get a good fragging it won't fry your brain (the feedback is only visual--what is on the screen).
There is nothing insightful here. "Hard to install", "hard to use", "hard to maintain"....wow...criticisms of Linux that were starting to get old and tired and irrelevant five years ago and there are STILL hundreds of tired old posts on these topics. JUST STOP ALREADY! The points were made, they have been addressed, they are irrelevant. NEXT!
/. one time about being a victim of the "cheap Chinese bursting capacitor" motherboard issue on my Win2k box...I got a replacement on recall, but
Let me ask you something, how is the average joe going to find out what in the heck Synaptic is if they don't know enough about computer to know the difference between downloading and installing?
Why would the "average user" need to know what synaptic is? All they need to know is how to click "Add or remove programs" off a pull-down menu in contemporary Linux-based OSes (Ubuntu in particular really has me impressed actually). It actually seems easier than the windows equivalent in my opinion. In Windows, I've encountered such baffling things as "installing windows installer"...you have to install an installer before installing your program? WTF? Why? In Ubuntu the installer is there and it just works. There is no "dependency hell" either; the Canonical folks have packaged everything up for you and if the program you want needs another package it gives a nice little reminder that what you selected uses such-and-such other program so it'll install both...and it tells you before you click OK.
For that matter, why would an average user even need to know the difference between download and install with the big Linux OSes anymore either? In Ubuntu it all happens at once anyways.
You identify 2 issues with Linux...two tired, old obsolete issues:
And, while is seems like heresy, Windows has far less installation issues, if only because the hardware is made for it)
Eh, try telling that to someone who actually has to install Windows. Believe me, Windows has installation issues. Average users just don't have to install as much because, MSFT being the monopolist it is, its products are pre-installed...but let me tell you the average PC user most definitely cannot cope with a great deal of issues Windows has...especially during an upgrade. Upgrading NT-kernel based Windows (2000 to XP, XP to Vista) has more issues than upgrading Ubuntu. For one thing, doing an OS upgrade equivalent to the aforementioned upgrade can be done through Ubuntu's equivalent to "windows update"...not the case with Windows. For another, "DRIVER dependency hell" has been a problem for Windows in the past (when my sister upgraded from 2000, the upgrade process left the 2000 drivers in place, and the printer driver crashed continuously until the problem was manually resolved).
It gets worse too--MSFT has a nasty habit of too-quickly obsoleting hardware. Computer peripherals have a notoriously short production lifespan, and discontinued products remain in common use for a long time. This is a big reason why Vista adoption outside of new PC purchases has been pretty dismally slow and why so many people wish to downgrade. Perfectly good printers, scanners, webcams, wireless NICs that are not that old but not made anymore were ignored by MSFT and many XP drivers break in Vista...so in the case of Vista the "hardware was designed for it" is false. Today, Linux has FAR better legacy hardware support than does Windows.
Then there is this little gem:
fanboys who don't understand how someone can't figure out how to use a command line tool with the proper switch options in order to enable their 'insert absolutely necessary component of a computer here' so they can use Linux
Often when I point out a shortcoming of Windows I get a MSFT fanboy chiming in with a "well you're just ignorant...just open a command prompt/regedit/mmc and....", or defending Windows' inability to load into at least safe mode when you have to replace a motherboard. I related my experience on
How can you win when you always play a losing hand? They are "bashed if they do" because they're treating intelligent critics as if they're idiots.
Those in-the-know KNOW there is a catch and it's a pretty big catch too: those who use patent-encumbered APIs in FOSS applications will be left alone...until someone uses that FOSS commercially, and then all bets are off and MSFT will be after their protection money again. Those who most want MSFT to provide PROPER interoperability know what a standard is. Barfing out tens of thousands of pages of API specs does not a standard make. A standard is not driven by a single vendor. A standard is vetted by a standards body. A standard is IMPLEMENTABLE (what MSFT has released is a core-dump; nobody's going to be able to provide the kind of interoperability provided by MSFT's native implementations without a monumental investment of time and money to adequately understand what is in the APIs).
This was done because the EU, and even the US DOJ actions of the past, are increasingly forcing their hand, and they've "opened the kimono" under carefully crafted terms that appease regulators (that aren't savvy enough to know what meaningful interoperability entails) yet still ensure MSFT retains the leverage afforded by its market dominance. They're hoping that by sharing in the way they have, and releasing free developer tools and open source (but not Free in the GPL sense) OOXML implementations it will prove enticing enough for FOSS developers to implement something encumbered by MSFT.
Does MSFT really think we are THAT stupid? Do they really think that Free software is still about a bunch of small-time hippies that do it "just for fun"? Sorry, but the likes of IBM and Google are huge corporate backers of Free software projects--it isn't all hippie-geek love or some CS student's hobby anymore. These contributors are not going to want their work encumbered by a MSFT terms and conditions.
There is one interesting double-edged sword in this "MSFT truce": we will have a better idea than ever about what MSFT patents are threatening FOSS. On one hand, having MSFT IP so highly visible is one way they can defend their patents; it is more difficult to plead ignorance. On the other hand, the FOSS community knows which patents to work around in their own applications, and knows which patents to try to have invalidated in court, without pouring over the whole patent database.
Of course, it's always great to see MSFT being more open with information, and some of it might make an interesting read, so it isn't all bad. However this will ultimately do nothing at all to foster real interoperability; whatever benefits realised by the availability of information will be negated by making legal reverse engineering more difficult and by introducing tainted IP into FOSS.
...because it looks like the riddler is the "architect" behind the MS Source Force!
Nobody running a successful LBO firm is stupid enough to make this ridiculous lawsuit the central part of an execution plan.
The Statements in the release are quite lawyerly indeed. The funding is in place, IN PART, to "see SCO's legal claims through to their full conclusion". PJ interprets this to mean "continue to attack Linux", and indeed the deal suggests that is something these investors would like to see returns from: the vast majority of this $100M is not hard cash to be handed over in one lump sum loan, it is a "line of credit" to fund continued operations and part of financing this line of credit would be, IIRC, 17% of any monetary judgments in SCO's favour.
However, I cannot believe that the smart people behind SNCP sincerely think they have a good chance of actually WINNING the lawsuit. I think it's more of a "lottery ticket"--lawyers make sure their butts are covered, and that they'll be able to screw ove...errr I mean "receive compensation" under all circumstances. "Continue to pursue" litigation "to their full conclusion" could very well be code words for "finally put it to rest". They apparently have a plan that includes the legal stuff but haven't released details (and taking SCO private would mean they don't ever have to do so). That plan very likely incorporates (or entirely consists of) a contingency plan. It looks pretty bleak to reverse the decision on copyright ownership, but they can appeal a judgment on royalties owed to Novell and get out of paying tens of millions. The same goes for any counter-suits from the likes of IBM or Red Hat. SNCP may think they have the ability to get SCO out of hot water without paying out as much (or any) money.
In short, their legal strategy might (wisely) be a defensive strategy to cut their losses and move on. To paraphrase that cute song "if I had a (hundred) million dollars", well, I'd "buy me a SCO" too actually, and that would almost be my legal plan, though I'd be more apt to not put too much effort in "cut the losses" and settle out of court. If I was some LBO billionaire dude I'd buy SCO, and when judgment came I'd say "here's your money Novell", and subsequently settle all other disputes quickly. Then I'd promptly GPL UNIXWare and OpenServer and use what's left of the technical people to refocus SCO as a "solutions provider" to target the thousands of SCO users around the world with UNIXWare/OpenServer-to-Linux migration plans. Anything of redeeming value in the newly-GPLed legacy OS products would then be incorporated into a "LinuxWare" distribution tailored to be as close as possible to a drop-in replacement for existing SCO customers.
The background of SNCP and their "middle eastern partners" really make me uncomfortable though. Those stated partners include the Saudi prince who is Bill Gates' investment partner in the Four Seasons hotel chain. These are legally-savvy business tycoons. I cannot see them taking the "Mark Shuttleworth act of benevolency" approach that I'd take. They are no doubt acting with convincing insider knowledge. I think that there might be a few motivators for this investment:
* They might have a convincing legal argument to overturn some of the judgements against them--for example they might be able to retain copyright to at least portions of UNIX, and that would at least allow the IBM lawsuit to move forward and keep the FUD coming for Microsoft.
* They are trying to stem customer migrations to Linux. I have no doubt that even if Microsoft isn't tied to this deal that BillG *is* in some capacity, and he obviously has the betterment of Microsoft in his self interest. The business plan outside the legal battle may be in fact to steer SCO customers towards Microsoft solutions, and perhaps to eventually have MSFT absorb SCO entirely. If you combine that with the first point, that would mean MSFT could end up with some UNIX copyright ownership--a great piece of IP to leverage if you wished to embrace, extend and extinguish *real* UNIX operating systems of all kinds (like
I started using the internet in the last months before the WWW was invented (I told someone that once and they gave me a confused "what does that mean, isn't the web what the internet IS?"...boy times change quickly). I used email to communicate from afar to avoid postage and long distance fees. There was this thing called majordomo on the department's mail server and we could make lists to broadcast announcements...what a concept!
.com bubble around 2000 that vision seemed to have become lost, and since then it seems there is great pressure to shape the internet into something along the lines of traditional broadcasting. We went from techies setting up their own web servers to early web users tinkering with text editors and primitive HTML editors building their own pages, to a variety of blog sites where people kept online journals, to where we are today where only a small number of online presences are considered "relevant" and people feel that the only way to participate online is through one of these few relevant sites like Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo, Google and MSN. To think we thought the likes of Compuserve, Progidy and Delphi would be made obsolete, never again to return to the same relevance,
Facebook is fun and all, I guess, but I'm really not sure why the heck we NEED it. What is wrong with everyday ordinary technology we had for years before Facebook? Maintain your own addressbook and use email to communicate. Throw your pics on the web server space your local ISP probably still provides and make your own album, and invite your friends to do the same. What's really sad is how email was allowed to turn into a spam-infested stagnant scum-pond. However, like Lake Erie, efforts have been put into cleaning up the ecosystem that have started to deliver results. With proper spam filtering, domainkeys, etc. you can reduce your spam to 1 a day or even less. Seems far better signal:noise ratio than Facebook's announcements (of course you can turn those off too).
If you are as geeky as I am you can go find an ISP that offers a fixed IP address that allows inbound connections for servers. If being online is that big part of your life then paying $30 to $60 a month for ISP isn't a high cost (no more than cable tv if you put it in perspective). Then you can set up a web server that you and your friends can use as your own personal discussion forum/blog/album. Then, the info you put on your server is controlled by you, who you let access the site is basically up to you, and if you want to take it down you don't have to badger some meathead in some unresponsive customer service dept. to remove your files. This sounds really geeky, but it sure is easier to do than it was back in the "dark-ages" of the 1990's...if you can run the setup CD for Windows XP, you can set up a LAMP server these days.
I run a server as a hobby myself, and prefer to use that as where I put my "online presence" over Facebook or Myspace or whatever. I have accounts with hose sites but I log in on those seldom to never. Of course I got into computers at a time when BBSes were really coming into fashion and 300 baud modems were still commonplace. When you were a geek kid with geek friends you set up your own BBSes to communicate and share files, and when you didn't do that it wasn't uncommon to end up talking with or meeting the sysop in person.
The internet community as a whole needs to remember the culture in those old-school PPS and pre-WWW internet days. Internet technologies and the arrival of broadband was exciting to such people because it could be personally empowering--if we all had half-decent connections into the internet we'd all have the means to "run our own printing presses" without the impossible capital investment. Our BBSes could be supplanted by internet email and our own ftp sites and NNTP servers and gopher pages and this new exciting WWW thing. Some of us thought we could all have our own easy-to-use personal servers the way we ran our own BBSes.
Somewhere in the
...that basically starts with a pre-conceived conclusion and looks for evidence to back it up, I suspect.
The problem is that the net emissions from biofuel production cannot ever be determined accurately---it is totally impossible ot absolutely quanitfy it because it is always a moving target.
The article goes on about rainforest being clear-cut to make way for the production of fuel plants. That kind of land makes really poor land for growing and there is no evidence at all that shows biofuel production has been cited as a reason for clearing a significant amount of new land. The "biofuel lobbyists" are right about one thing; the study is too simplistic to be an accruate assesment of the real net impact of biofuel production. What if the farm equipment itself was powered by biofuels? What if the waste biomass from preparing farmland and growing the crops was recovered and used for power generation? What if we used biomass from the ocean (this is already done on an experimental scale)? Have there been studies on the efficiency of biofuel-powered engines and on the overall emissions (sulphur, particulates and things that not only afect the climate but actually harm our health)? What about the impact of making fuel out of tarsands vs middle-east light sweet crude vs. crude drilled in the Gulf of Mexico? How can they put a number like "92 years of emissions"? It all smells pretty fishy to me.
It's like the argument that biofuels threaten foodstocks. Well, we used Soybeans extensively for food products...and it makes a good biofuel...and plastic...and industrial lubricants...and a host of other things. What is wrong with doing that using corn too? Corn production in the US actually exceeds what the world NEEDS for food by quite a margin, as do the production of many other crops (wheat, etc). These crops have been very cheap since the depression (in fact for decades they went down significantly when adjusted for inflation) and only in the last few years have grain prices been coming up to where they really should be. Sometimes I wonder if there are lobbyists out there for the processed food undustry putting resistance out to any competing demand in order to ensure they can name their own bargain prices for high-fructose corn syrup, bleached and enriched white wheat flour and hydrogenated vegetable oil and keep the margins on twinkie sales up.
Anyways, what is the big surprise here? Burning fuel creates emissions...surprise surprise! When you drive an electric car you are indirectly burning natural gas, or coal, or splitting uranium atoms. When you are using biodiesel you are burning soybeans or canola, along with whatever the equipment used to grow it uses. Same with ethanol except it's corn or switchgrass or sugarcane. Hello...if you want to reduce emmissions DON'T DRIVE SO DAMN MUCH! Get rid of your suburbans and buy a hatchback (a VW Golf diesel is better than a Prius if you don't live in a big city). Better yet, get off your ass and WALK once in a while.
Actually having worked in power plants and refineries and such...I have a hard time believing ANY sort of fuel doesn't have a significant environmental impact. These guys obviously haven't seen how tarsands ar mined, or how much fuel an oil tanker uses, or how much power an offshore drilling platform uses.
You're just being anal.
To clarify, he was being an-AHL.
Think of it like a cell phone PC Card that can plug into a variety of host devices.
;-)
I'm not sure where people got the idea that this phone-gadget was like an oversized SIM card. A SIM card is basically a low-capacity flash-memory card with keys for identity and encryption. This device is basically an entire cellphone, which I understand is functional all on its own at a basic level. The closest thing to this is the W-SIM card which is a SIM with a cellular transceiver welded to its back, but even that lacks the processing power and user-interface that could make it a phone in and of itself.
I think that you clue in even more than these Modu people do though in mentioning "cell phone PC Card". I'd LOVE to have a basic wireless phone device that was in a PC Card form factor. There are "cellular modems" already out there, but it'd be great if you had one with, say, a gig of flash, embedded processor, a 16-key dial pad, a minimal LCD display (just enough for caller ID or to see what you're dialing) and a small battery (removable if possible but not required--Apple solders in batteries on their i-things after all).
A standalone-capable "PC Card cellphone" would be quite appealing without any add-ons as a low-cost phone for basic communications--something my mum would like as all she does is place and receive phone calls. Then you could sell a "RAZR-style" dock in which you could latch your PC Card phone that consisted of a larger full-sized display, a camera and perhaps added battery capacity. The logic to drive the display and a simple camera would be relatively low-cost.
The PC Card form factor would make the possibilities very compelling--you could have this functional stand-alone phone that could slide into your laptop's PC Card slot, transforming it into a combination flash-drive and wireless modem, with the basic phone capabilities still available via a PC application (check your voicemail through your soundcard, do text messaging direct through the phone, etc). Finally, you could have an "EEE PC-style" dock, in which the PC Card phone itself was the processor (actual brains of the computer) but the dock supplied a cheap, sub-notebook form factor just like the EEE PC with similar keyboard, display, battery, extra memory, etc.
I'm surprised how the vast majority of people dismissed this "modular phone" concept right out of hand as being stupid and made redundant by SIM card technology. It ISN'T a SIM card--you'd but a SIM card INSIDE one of these things to activate it. I think the concept is very sound; it's just the proprietary form-factor that makes for a flawed execution.
(hopefully there isn't a patent on this concept--if one is filed from this point on I'd make note of this discussion thread as part of the prior-art on the idea
A damned 'Engineer' in all the title's glory developed my car, and yet half the time a warning light comes on,
;-)
Hey, don't blame us, it was the damned software "engineer" who programmed the firmware who came up with how that idiot light worked. Leave it to a software guy to come up with the brilliant idea of illuminating a "check ENGINE" light when the GAS CAP isn't properly tightened
Many millions of dollars later in court, it was verified that the Engineer f'ed up the plans and the construction crews were not at fault.
Doctors eff up too. Sometimes brain surgeons carve out the wrong bit of grey matter, and sometimes they prescribe conflicting medications, etc etc. That doesn't mean the practice of medicine is any less "rigourous". Same goes with engineering. You say "many millions of dollars later in court"...well that means the engineer was taken to task for his malpractice. Contrast that with programming: there has been more than one error in DCOM in the Windows OS that I know for a fact has been directly involved in the cause of many thousands, if not millions, of dollars worth of downtime. Can they sue the programmer at MSFT that wrote the code that failed to perform to the specs as Microsoft published them? Nope--look at the EULA. Can't sue MSFT, and can't sue the programmer. Probably can't even figure out which programmer to take to task.
So care to tell me about the 'rigours' of this so called Engineer?
The ones who pay for the mistakes are the end users, who often demand compensation from the engineers who used automation software that depended on the flawed DCOM code. Then, engineers have to get the programmers to acknowledge their responsibility. Pulling impacted molars is easier than that sometimes.
The 'rigours' of engineering ultimately boil down to that. When a screwup engineer messes up your road, well, someone ultimately sues, a "professional practice" review board will then review the case and has the power not only to make sure you are fired from your present employer, but that you can't design roads for any other employer either. There really isn't that equivalent for Software really established yet. In Canada there is CIPS, but there isn't legislation mandating membership and professional oversight by CIPS for IT professionals--you can go to "MCSE boot camp" and then call yourself a professional IT person. The provinces mandate that to practice engineering you have to belong to the provincial association affiliated with CCPE, and to be a professional member you have to get a degree from an accredited institution, take professional practice exams and log a minimum number of "professional development" hours.
I'm not saying that there is not such thing as "software engineering" or that software development isn't any more "rigourous" than, say, designing a building or automation systems or an automobile's drivetrain. I'm just saying that the regulatory infrastructure is not fully established yet, and indeed it is very important to recognise that software engineering really can be engineering and should be accorded that respect. The CCPE takes the title of "P. Eng." as seriously as medical associations take the title "MD". They don't want people who went out and studied for MCSE certification for a few days or weeks to present themselves as being capable of taking on the responsibilities of an REAL engineer whose conduct can have serious consequences.