...to this article, being that it seems virtually devoid of morality?
Mr. Chesbrough isn't even subtle about it either--he openly advocates "selective enforcement" of the law to maintain dominance and smother the competition. He goes on further to explain how as a market goes from creation and growth phases into maturity (ie. they have their users trapped) that MS should then suddenly ramp up enforcement and start collecting payback. This is how drug dealers and the mafia operate, not how legitimate businesses are supposed to operate!
Either this clown is as ethically challenged as an Enron accountant or else he is a masterful troll. I can only hope it is the latter and he is trying to bring "A Modest Proposal" into the information age. I'd be careful if I were him though, because over the years, MS has gradually been moving towards the "Mafia business model" and is very nearly there: They already have the opinion that "if the Chinese are pirating it should at least be our stuff", have "favourite customers" that pay only a small fraction of the US retail price...and they are already making patent "protection money" deals with skittish Linux companies. They need no more encouragement from the likes of Business Week and its editors.
Atari even knew it was crap, by calling its operating system "TOS"
TOS was unofficially known as "Tramiel Operating System". I believe Ol' Jack had a pretty well-inflated ego.
The Atart ST most certainly was NOT "crap", though it was far from being technically superior to the Amiga, at least when they were initially introduced. There were a few points in Atari's favour that gave it an edge over the Amiga in niche applications:
* It has MIDI ports built in and superior music sequencer software. Atari's and Macs were the musicians choice, and the Atari was particularly appealing because the MIDI ports weren't an add-on and the price point was lower than the Mac. The built-in sound was crappy (only on par with my Coleco computer) and the Amiga had great stereo sound--but not good enough for professional sound production, which at the time always used the output of professional MIDI-connected instruments over the built-in sound of computers.
* It had superior display choices than the Amiga (I mean image quality, not in terms of graphics performance/colours/resolution of the computer itself). The Atari ST had very good video output signals and the monitors were of matching quality. The monochrome monitor was small but very crisp and easy on the eyes, making it ideal for desktop publishing. The Atari ST was thought better than the Amiga by many for desktop publishing for print media. Amiga was obviously king of VIDEO production as the Amiga designers put a priority on NTSC and PAL compatibility over visual crispness.
* The ST had the same CPU running 12 percent faster than in the US Amiga (and I think the Euro Amiga was a bit slower yet). Raw mathematical operations that couldn't use the co-processors in the Amiga ran faster on the ST. The Amiga's clock speed was a multiple of the "colourburst" frequencies of colour television signals. That is why the Amiga didn't fully clock the 68K CPU--the slightly slower rate made it work much better with video equipment (making genlocks, etc. trivial to do).
The Amiga overall was technically far more sophisticated than the ST because its origins come from video game design. Amiga was engineered by a team composed largely of ex Atari engineers who were responsible for the 8-bit line of Atari computers and consoles. In fact, it shows in the architecture of both machines as they both made extensive use of purpose-built coprocessors (TIA, GTIA, POKEY, etc in the Atari 8-bits and Paula, Denise, Agnes, etc in the Amiga). Amiga didn't start out as a Comomdore machine of course--it was originally the "Lorraine Project" form the Amiga corporation (whose released products were mainly aftermarket game controllers--the revenue used to fund Lorraine). Lorraine was to be the engine for a high-end console, but this was the post-shakeout console market and there was little appetite by investors to enter what was thought to be a market killed by cheap home computers.
Amiga needed help with releasing the Lorraine as a product. Since Amiga was formed bye ex-Atari engineers, they approached Atari (recently acquitred by ex-Commodore head Tramiel) to license the chipset to be used in a next-generation Atari product--and since Tramiel was king of Atari now it was probably going to be a computer. Commodore was quite threatened by this obviously, and to add insult to injury they were losing talented Tramiel loyalists to Atari. Commodore couldn't let this happen, so they swooped in and bought Amiga corp--this abruptly ended their negotiations with Atari, and also for some reason meant the discontinuation of its entire line of Amiga game controllers. So, in actual fact the Amiga was probably the REAL successor to the Atari 8-bit line as it shares much more heritage with the Atari 800 than the Atari ST does (with a similar design philosophy--right down to naming their projects after women...Pam, Colleen...Lorraine).
Of course, Tramiel was steamed that Commodore would do such a thing (and wasn't all that happy with Jay Miner and co eith
I've not yet had to change my hose address yet with so haven't encountered that problem yet. I can view and pay my bills, and change my service features, online using FF without problem.
Drivers' licenses are provincially administered--it looks like you are from Ontario and I am from Alberta (so yeah, I guess you might consider my home "opposite land"). Alberta government services websites have given me relatively little trouble. Alberta's gov't is has been a bit more "forward thinking" than Ontario's (though the post-Ralph Tories seem a bit tired nowadays) and a lot of things are handled differently. Most of Registry Services (which does driver's licenses) are contracted out to approved registry agents...so there are actually many choices out there, not just one government-owned site, that may provide online services. If one registry doesn't meet your needs, just go to a competitor. I've used the Alberta Motor Association's website before and it seems to work fine in FireFox.
As for Pizza Pizza, they don't have stores in my province. I usually phone in fast food deliveries anyways. Here we have "Pizza 73". Their online order site works just fine on FireFox:-).
...but it'll basically be relegated to niche markets in the years to come.
Obviously desktops have advantages and laptops have advantages. You don't want to lug around a 22 inch screen on your laptop but for your desktop, you want that. You're not going to get the latest and greatest hardware on a laptop, but you can on a desktop.
Laptops are the winners here though--laptops CAN be had in very cutting-edge configurations, and when you get into that performance level both the laptop and desktop form factors get pretty expensive--and when you factor in all peripherals you need for a desktop that are integrated into a laptop then the price gap closes quite a bit. Also, the full sized display, keyboard and mouse is not a huge advantage for the desktop because all laptops can be plugged into those components when at the desk anyways. The only difference with the desktop is with price at that point.
The jobs that are better suited to a desktop are pretty limited I think, so therefore I think it'll be a niche market consisting of:
1. ultra-budget market (think the $300 system from Wal-Mart) for the starving student, pensioner, etc who wants a "good enough" PC for essential tasks
2. entry-level server market--for small and medium operations that want a value priced server solution that doesn't require rack mounting hardware, yet has the physical capacity to hold RAID configurations and be upgradable and expandable.
3. "geek hobbyist" market--hardcore gamers, system builders who like to pick and choose "best of breed" at a component level and the rice-burner-pimp-my-ride case-customisers.
The one advantage that desktops had aside from a price advantage was expandability/upgradability. However, as with price advantage narrowing there is not advantage in upgrading beyond boosting hard drive and memory anymore--it makes more economic sense to replace beyond that, and laptops are already easily expandable in terms of memory and hard drives.
They have to be smart enough to know how to spend it too.
The Feds would have the $$$ and be able to hire the skill labor to build some pretty sophisticated spyware tools.
The feds had $170 MILLION to spend to modernise their case management system from one based mostly on paper files augmented by a crufty old mainframe that could only manage or search textual data, to a modern, enterprise-class computer system called the "Virtual Case File" system. The contract was awarded in 2001 (just BEFORE 9/11), and to this day the VCF is STILL essentially non-functional!
Instead of examining what off-the-shelf case management/collaboration/etc software had to offer (whether Free software or not) they opted to let the vendor decide how to proceed--giving them very little in terms of restrictions or system requirements. The developers chose--for their supposed ENTERPRISE-CLASS solution in late 2001--to CUSTOM DEVELOP a FOXPRO application...to handle ALL the case files for ALL the FBI! For $170M There was no test plan, and no migration strategy--they intended to just install it and turn it on and use all of it right away for all new and currently active files. Well, at least they managed to get new computers on most agent's desks (theones who had nothing but a 3270 terminal anyways) for the money.
Somehow it wouldn't surprise me if the feds' "sophisticated" spyware tools relied heavily on script-kiddie toolkits, social engineering tricks (Click here for horse porn! Free screen savers!) and so on...an it probably works only with Windows computers (despite having the same unrestricted access to Linux source code as everypne else I'm betting FBI and CIA types haven't clued in to making Linux rootkits yet). Remember we aren't talking about NSA or other scientific-research-oriented departments here--their "intelligence" seems confined by some fairly restrictive bounds.
I changed ISPs because my decent one was swallowed up by TELUS which royally messed up my nice little setup--they warned me that it would happen, but didn't say exactly what would happen or exactly when.
I went with "basic small business service" from a company called Radiant--it is the same kind of DSL, largely riding on the same TELUS networks, but Radiant does the admin. I get multiple fixed IPs, no ridiculous bandwidth caps, and tech support is staffed with actual techs. My plan is basic--CONNECTIVITY ONLY. They do not provide me with email addresses, do not host domains, don't block ports or provide firewalls or proxies or anything on their end--they offer those services with other more expensive packages.
One thing they DO regualrly do is scan their entire network and have tripwire-like software to alert them to problems. Within minutes they can find open mail relays, worm-infested IIS servers and so on--at which point ALL traffic involving the affected MAC address is blocked until theproblem is resolved. This is a very nice policy for professional services compared to the block-and-filter-by-default policy of residential/consumer service.
In any case I now have the freedom to establish my OWN firewall policies, host my OWN email and webservers, set up MY OWN VPN and whatever else--so I don't have to rely on the ISP to make sure those things are online and properly configured, whether it is filtering false-positive-SPAM without telling me, or imposing file attachment and mailbox size restrictions I don't like. I can use apache with mod-perl and whatever database and Perl or PHP scripting to my hearts content, all with my ISPs blessing, because if my server grinds to a halt it really only affects me.
I love the idea of "connectivity only" service and very few ISPs seem willing to offer it. At the consumer/residential level, there should be that kind of service too, with just a single DHCP address supplied behind a simple NAT firewall so a person can just plug and go. Really who needs an email address from their ISP nowadays anyways, when everybody has an email address through work, or gmail, or hotmail or yahoo already? The less they have to offer, the lower the cost for the same or better reliability and bandwidth (I pay almost the same for my service as some others in the US pay for crappy Comcast like service). How many people actually USE their ISP's web pages and CDs and whatnot? Even my retired parents almost exclusively use their hotmail accounts because, even as relative beginners on computers, they realise that they can't be bothered with the pain of an email address that cannot move between ISPs. I think a LOT of people would go for under-$20/month 2.5Mb/s DSL "connectivity only".
The techs like to use a CD installer which uses Internet Explorer to configure the cable modem....would be able to use their own PC or equipment to do this. When I had DSL installed in 1999 the tech was a bit confounded at my Linux box and couldn't use his Windows CD on my machine. It was a little inconvenient for him perhaps but nothing insurmountable. He used the serial "terminal" port and my miniterm to do it (hypertermnal or any other sort of thing would work too). The DSL modem I have today still has a terminal port.
These days most people where I am use the self-install kits (even those who are not "geeks"). With the address on the sticker affixed to the modem they can remotely configure, or you can configure yourself (unconfigured modems typically direct all HTTP to a config page, which works in any browser). My preset DSL provider doesn't even need any numbers--just your name and billing address for verification.
It floors me when I STILL see those stupid CDs--all they do is mess up your PC ad I tell people that I'm helping out that the first step is to throw away the install CD if you got one from your ISP.
The Rogers website works very poorly with Firefox [especially without flash]
Rogers handles my phone service but not my internet, however I've had no problems paying my bills using FF at their site, granted they do rely on Flash too much. I've viewed the PDF formatted bills in Linux just fine, though they are somewhat glitchy when I try to print them (I've only even bothered to do that once--why waste paper when you pay online anyways?)
The Canadian government is going the same way sadly. CRA, MOT and a few others don't render at all in Firefox, or when they do select elements fail and make the pages useless.
Actually, the government seems to be going the OPPOSITE way--in my experience they have been slowly but steadily IMPROVING cross-platform support. I filed my tax return with FF, and used FF (on Linux, no less) to get my passport. My beef is that they over-engineer their sites. Why are things like passport applications and census questionnaires implemented using big, slow, Java (cr)applets when normal secure web forms suffice for most banks, provincial gov'ts, etc?
And the worse part is though they have to go out of their way to break things.
I don't think they go out of their way to break Firefox, Linux or any other particular target--they go out of their way to be needlessly complex though, and complexity leads to fragility. Remember we are dealing with big-old-telcos and governments here--their developers are paid by the hour, often work there because they can't find work elsewhere, or don't want to because it's low stress, etc. They don't seem bound to schedules or budgets (though you wouldn't know it by the terms of some of their contracts--but in-house is different).
Anyways, you CAN get these sites to work on macs, linux, whatever browser (in fact, CRA specifically supports FireFox by name, and if you use an unmentioned browser like Epiphany it doesn't block you--it merely warns you). The problem is that they do craptacular things like over-use flash or java for no logical reason at all, so if you find you are having trouble, you should first make sure you've filled up on the requisite plug-ins before cursing them as Microsoft lackeys.
Pizza Pizza also doesn't work in Linux which means I have to boot my Windows laptop to get some chow
Why don't you PHONE Pizza Pizza like normal people would do? I see limited appeal for using the 'net for takeout or delivery fast food. The 'net is more useful when the orders/choices are more complex and/or you have more options like recurring deliveries, etc, which is nice if you get your groceries delivered.
...MS Office and OO.o--I am not a huge fan of either. That doesn't mean you have to settle for "feeling filthy" running MS Office, being frustrated with OO.o or using a text editor to do word processing jobs.
Frankly, what do I think is the best office suite? Office 97 or 2000. Everything after that just went downhill.
[...]
and the rest of the contenders for 'best office suite' crown are nonstarters.
Haven't you given any serious consideration to KOffice or GNOME Office applications? Your post suggests that you would like something that meets all the basic needs but is lightweight, and both are more lightweight and fairly capable and (IMHO) more usable than OO.o OR MS Office. I am not a really huge fan of KOffice apps but I DO find the GNOME ABIWord and GNUmeric applications to be very welcoming to those who yearn for Office 97/2000 type of experiences. GNUmeric in particular is a favourite of mine--it has that snappy, lightweight feel to it yet is better than Excel in that it does calculations better and has a better library of functions for REAL number crunchers.
Anyways, I tend to get a bit frustrated with most office suites because they continue to grow more monolithic (everything gets jammed together into one massive megapackage, which runs counter to "the UNIX way"). I favour the GNOME office apps because they have retained a degree of autonomy from one another that its competitors seem to want to erase.
I'm not sure if many of these points need to be worked around very often, if at all.
1. OpenOffice will never be as compatible with Office as Office is.
Well, WordPerfect used to be king, and MS Word was "mostly compatible" when it came to loading WP files. "Mostly" turned out to be "good enough" when weighing features, especially when things moved into the GUI world. Also, compatibility with competing products is a total non issue for internal use--it is only a concern when dealing with documents generated or consumed outside the business. Keep in mind that the native format for OO.o documents has been submitted as a standard, and there are already de-facto standards like PDF (which is already the preferred method of document exchange with external people with my employer even though we are a Microsoft shop). If the cost savings and other merits outweigh compatibility problems then it need not be a significant barrier to OO.o adoption
2. If you know Office you must learn OpenOffice. Office is taught in every school I know of.
And every schoolchild I know of who is proficient enough to use Office is quite capable of self-teaching themselves around the differences. Also, have you SEEN MS Office 2007? Obviously MS doesn't think UI consistency from version to version is very high on the priority list. Seriously, you CANNOT argue that the learning curve is flatter to go from "classic" MS Office to Office 2007 than it is to go to OO.o, since OO.o looks and works more like old Office than Office 2007 does..and you can bet that MS is NOT giving them a deal to buy a discontinued version of Office.
3. I still don't think Calc is even as good as Excel in Office 2000 but then I haven't really used it a lot in a long time.
Well, you should try it again now, because the gap has closed considerably. Even so, there are open alternatives to Excel AND OO.o calc that ARE superior--most notably Gnumeric. Capability isn't a problem--the alternatives are capable enough or even superior. At issue is compatibility, and as I mentioned it is a limited issue. It IS the biggest pain point for businesses that are Excel junkies however (you know, the ones who have cobbled together a rickety-but-big-and-complex ERP/CRM out of a steaming, macro-and-OLE-object-infested Excel workbook files)--I'll concede that. However, when it comes to using a spreadsheet as intended, Gnumeric is hands down the most pleasant to work with IMHO.
4. Outlooks+Exchange are a better Enterprise calendering system than anything I have seen from FOSS.
The only thing it really beats is Bloated Goats from Infernal Business Machines. There are oodles of calendaring systems out there that are quite capable. Some are quite intriguing. For example, Citadel (the Citadel/UX variant) evolved from BBS into a web-based forum/email/collaboration/groupware system that is incredibly efficient with resources, surprisingly easy to install, configure and maintain and includes a perfectly capable calendaring system that works pretty well with clients like Thunderbird and KOrganiser via GroupDAV. Perhaps MS Exchange is the "ultimate in richness" but Citadel could meet the requirements for the vast majority of users and is WAY more scalable than Exchange.
5. Sharepoint. I haven't seen anything as easy to use from the FOSS community.
The Free Software tools are there for the backend--it is the "easy to use" front end part that presents the biggest challenge. But for the price MS charges for their stuff? You could hire an ambitios young programmer to MAKE it for you for that price.
Microsoft had done some good things, give the devil his due.
Yes, they have some pretty quality stuff out there despite the slagging they get. I'll give the devil his due, but it makes me uncomfortable to have to sell my soul to the devil in order to buy in.
But for listening on high end stereo systems, the CD (and other "little plastic discs") is king.
What you are describing is the "niche market"--the stagnant little puddle. A high bitrate MP3 is of adequate quality for 95 percent of the population, even on quality equipment (and these days quality stereo systems with signal-process away much of the effects of MP3 compression). Then there are 4 percent of people who are quite particular, and their needs can be met with uncompressed digital audio, or lossless compression like FLAC--that media is NOT on little plastic discs and is IDENTICAL to CD in quality (it could even be better if the bitrate is higher). Music CDs are OBSOLETE--period.
There is 1 percent who are audiophiles with OCD--they are so obsessive that they spend tens of thousands to buy stereos made with discrete elecrtonics (sometimes even pre-transistor technology!) and insist that ALL digitally encoded music sounds "cold and tinny". These nuts have record turntables that are spring-mounted and precision-balanced, with ultra-fine diamond styluses and have all the classics on big black vinyl LPs.
If we continue comparing with the typewriter industry, right now there is literally a total monopoly on the manufacture of manual typewriters: Olivetti is the ONLY company on the planet that still builds andsells new manual typewriters, and it is a very tiny part of their business now. Some day that will happen to "little plastic disc distributors" too--either there will be one company that represents the entire industry and even they just do it as a side business, or the industry will be represented my a number of "little minnows", like crunchy-granola-cafes that sell old books off a shelf in the corner.
Selling media content on little plastic discs is obsolete and as such is a shrinking industry. When the pond gets smaller the fish must ether get smaller or some fish must die. That is just life.
Look what happened when computers with word processing software made typewriters obsolete. Should we have had our governments spend millions to prop up the Smith Coronas and Olivettis and Underwoods and enact legislation to restrict the use and functionality of word processing software, or put a tax on computer software to fund concessions for ailing typewriter companies? Of course not, that's a stupid idea and very backward thinking.
That is why Sam died--the "selling plastic discs with music on them" pond is slowly shrinking and Sam was a big old fish set in his ways. Other fish in the pond like HMV ate too much of Sam's food and Sam starved to death. That's just life. Some of those little fish will live on, eking out a modest existence in a little puddle and other fish will evolve into amphibians and hop into another bigger pond with fresher water.
The thing is, things in Canada ARE very rosy indeed relative to our southern neighbours. Our economy is more robust at the moment and demand for media content is obviously strong enough to support some kind of healthy music industry--it's just going to look different. Yes, Sam was an icon of sorts and it's never nice to see an old friend die...but it happened to other old names like Eaton's and the sky didn't fall.
The posted article makes some observation that linux OSes that use RPM have a stagnating market share but provides no argument at all as to why, so I'd say that any intelligent individual would take that as an interesting observation and perhaps a subtle troll. I'm not saying that one package format is better or worse than another, I'm just saying that there is no supporting argument so the statement is just there to be provocative and nothing else.
But ignoring that, I wasn't talking about dependency resolution. I was talking about RPM crapping all over its databases periodically, even to the point of refusing to rebuild them and needing a full reinstall.
I use mostly RPM-based distributions and would have to say that what YOU are describing is very strange for a current RPM-based distribution. I personally have NEVER had that happen to my own systems. I know that with the somewhat hasty release of v4 of RPM that there were some fairly serious reliability problems, but wasn't that a problem in Fedora Core about FOUR releases ago? That's like making an argument about how much Windows sucks compared to MacOS X based upon your experiences with NT4. Either you lack recent experience with RPM or you are having similar "unusual experiences" with an RPM-based OS that the frustrated Ubuntu user had with Debian packages.
Oh, that and the truly horrible UI for RPM, that necessitates keeping a cheat sheet around for the bizarre incantations.
This statement makes me think you really DON'T have any meaningful recent experience with RPM-based OSes. The 'rpm' program is no longer used for day-to-day package maintenance by the majority of users, and it is NOT the equivalent to apt nor was it intended to be. To compare varieties of apples you'd be better to compare to apt to something like yum. By avoiding low-level/technical tools like the rpm command line there is no need to perform "bizarre incantations" or keep cheat sheets.
I really do get tired of these weak debates and would like to see actual reasoned arguments as to why, technically and from a "user experience" perspective, why apt is better than yum or vice versa, because though I've played with both I haven't seen anything about one or the other that would have any meaningful impact on my choice of OS. Most often I don't do anything really fancy with my software package management tools--I install, upgrade or uninstall a package here and there, and BOTH have been "good enough" for that purpose--generally speaking, equally reliable and easy to use. I'd say the vast majority of users do nothing but that, and the ONLY people who would even have a reason to care would be developers who build and maintain the packages and repositories themselves. I've never built a.deb package but I have built my own.rpm packages a few times and found it to be a rather frustrating experience. I DO have to qualify that by saying it has been awhile and maybe it is better now.
Anyways, since I don't have the "full experience" of both installing AND building packages I'll admit that I cannot say with much credibility which package format is better--and I wish most others would admit that too! The best I can do is make an observation that the most ardent supporters of apt and.deb packages with credible arguments defending their position tend to be almost exclusively "hard core"/developer types--the ones who routinely compile tweaked kernels, do a lot of programming, author the packages themselves, etc. Therefore, I'd hazard a guess and say that where.deb and apt shine is in the developer's experience, not the end user's experience. If that really is the case, what package format your OS uses has pretty much no bearing at all on how successful it will be in getting onto users' computers. If ease of software development was the be-all and end-all of end-user acceptance then the Sony PS2 would've been such a dismal failure that Sony wouldn't have stayed
I'm not sure that the pricing and configurations offered by Dell indicate any deliberate games playing by Dell--the confusing and dynamic nature of them seem to be a general Dell trait. It's just booking flights online--prices change four times an hour and seem to have a lot of significant variables involved (what country you are browsing in, time of day, tides, phase of moon, barometric pressure and so on).
I think Slartibartfast might find his spaceship would perform better if he upgraded his systems from bistromaths to multivariable DELLculus or differential airline equations. The relative potential of numbers in the movement of customers through the web pages of either could quite possibly revolutionise interstellar travel;-)
99.9% of the computer using population probably can't do it, or doesn't want to. My point is, they are selling the widget, and the software basically goes along for free.
About the same number of people cannot, or aren't willing to, compile a kernel or configure a server or set up a point-of-sale system or install their home theatre or whatever else--they hire someone to do it for them and the software comes along for the ride. It isn't free-gratis for sure, but it's just part of the cost of the system, just as the cost of non-Free embedded software licensing/royalties/etc is built into a lot of consumer electronic devices. The important thing is to consider where the VALUE lies.
A bunch of computer files, even if it is on a shiny plastic disc and in a box with a glossy printed manual, has little to no intrinsic value on its own. You can plunk down $1000 or more on a box of Windows Server 2003 and it won't do a thing to run your business. It has to be installed and configured on your hardware to do anything useful at all. More and more, having a successful business is about how "value added" it is, so unless you are willing to put a great deal of support and service behind your non-Free application don't expect people to beat down your door. This is an EXTREMELY difficult task for a small upstart to do if it wants to make its presence known amongst the Microsoft's and IBMs. However, with Free software you can leverage the support of the developer and user community behind it and add your own value in the form of consulting, bundling, local, on-site service and so on.
This makes the assumption that, 1) having lost your investment in developing the original, but now worthless (due to being ripped off) application, you have enough resources left to make improvements to it and 2) that improvements can be made that people are willing to pay for.
You REALLY don't get it do you? Your application NEVER HAD ANY WORTH TO BEGIN WITH--even if it is closed source! You can burn it onto a CD and mail it to someone and it is only worth a partially-full used CD! It has POTENTIAL worth, but never had any "real" worth to begin with. There is much more real value in a "solution"--and people WILL AND DO pay for "solutions", and often software licensing is a minority of what they pay even if it is a non-Free solution.
But what I don't understand is how do you do this?
IBM understands it, which is why software licensing is a VERY SMALL part of their revenue stream. They offer VALUE-ADDED services--they take stuff with POTENTIAL value--software and hardware--and creat a solution with REAL value (an ERP system, on-line merchant systems, etc)--they build up this solution and hand it over to the customer and it is working and they use it and get value out of it--right there and then (if it is done right of course). This isn't like non-Free software where when you get it you sill have to install it, configure it, etc before you can use it. This is how things work with business/professional customers--and it works this way at the consumer level surprisingly often as well.
When I buy a VCR, I don't want to pay maintenance to make it work. I don't want to pay maintenance to have access to new and improved versions of it. I just want a stable, reliable product for X dollars, and my transaction with your company is done.
Since VCR's are obsolete I'd not buy one in the first place, but in any case...unlike a lot of software when you buy it it works right there and then...what annoys me is that MSFT and others sell SO MUCH software that is broken out of the box--for the longest time if you put XP on your computer and plugged it into the 'net it would be worm-ridden and unusable in 5 minutes.
Even if you VCR DOES work when you buy it, what happens if it stops working? The cost of warranty service is built in EVERY ner comsumer-electronics device. With closed software, "warranty service" becomes the MAIN cost of the software. Can you imagine the ontol
Why is that a problem? We've been using variants of soybean and canola for industrial purposes for pretty much as long as they've been grown in North America. In South America, there is already a sustainable fuel industry around the sugar cane (and no, it is NOT true that it takes more energy to produce ethanol from plants than you can get out of the ethanol, if it is done right).
The thing about "food stocks" is that when we need more we can just grow more. Conservation is a great idea (and absolutely essential for sustainable management of our environment) but when it comes to non-renewable resources like crude oil it doesn't matter HOW much you try to conserve, you'll eventually reach a point where it's gone and you can't get any more. Ultimately, the only sustainable consumption of a non-renewable resource is ZERO consumption.
Yes, preaching conservation CAN sound like "austerity" but it can also be called "efficiency" which is always a good thing. If we do nothing to explore new technologies to harness renewable energy sources and rely on conservation as our long-term method to sustain our environment then, quite literally and without exaggeration, we would have to live even more austere lives than the Amish--that is, completely stop using non-renewable energy and therefore stop using electricity, heat our homes with woodstoves, stop driving (or even taking the bus). That is not progress by anyone's definition.
But I do know that if my sole/product/ was software, I, too, would be leary about giving away the code for free.
I would be leery about ANY business where the sole product was software, because ultimately any company starting up today whose sole purpose was to develop and sell a software application as a product is doomed to failure--it will either be swallowed up whole by another company (MSFT) or will die in obscurity. Even in the entertainment software industry, probably the last great hope for closed-source development, the barrier to entry is pretty damn high, and the biggest startup successes lately have been in the "casual gaming" category, where the business model is more around the game as "multimedia content" and revenue is made by advertising and employing an almost "network television" type of model.
In your Linksys example, there is a hardware component that is not easy to replicate - there is a barrier to duplication.
An entry-level router is NOT that hard to replicate. A user inclined to tinker might just use an old PC off ebay as a router--all it takes is a compact Linux or BSD distro and some spare network cards and some time. Furthermore, there are many players out there with competitive products that have non-Free embedded software and it hasn't proven to be of particular advantage to them to be more proprietary than Linksys--in fact it is to their disadvantage as tinkerers opt to go for the more open solution automatically.
But I don't understand how this works with a pure software product. If you give it away to the world, then someone else is just going to take the code and make a derivative product from it that does the same thing but is free.
Well, that might happen with a BSD-style license, though at least the world will know YOU did it because of the attribution requirements of the BSD license (that is how we know that MSFT couldn't be bothered to write their own TCP/IP stack for NT so they just lifted a BSD-licensed one). GPL, however, does its best to ensure a wide-open, level playing field. Yes, a competitor could undercut you by giving away a derivative product for free, but he has to play by the rules and let everyone see HIS code too, or you can quite rightly slap him with a copyright-infringement lawsuit. So, if that is what happens, jsut take this derivative product back, improve it even more and one-up him./I/ wouldn't invest in a new product where I couldn't make any money selling the actual product but only support for it.
Well, *I* wouldn't invest in any venture that was focused on selling software as a product and treated service and support as afterthoughts.
As I said, if your business model relies on selling a copy of software like it was a widget you will be doomed to failure, so you'd better adjust your business model. In return for revenue you must add value. From an end-user perspective, there is ZERO value in a software license--it doesn't make their lives easier or make their business more productive or efficient. Generally licensing is one big pile of bullsh!t for a user--he has to punch in product keys here, activate software there, insert dongle god-knows-where to remove some deliberately-engineered artificial constraints on what he can do with his computer. GPL keeps the bull to a minimum for the end user--if you redistribute you must make source available on request which is no burden at all to end users.
That said, I think it is very hard to justify more than a few dollars it takes to produce and ship a shiny plastic disc and a printed manual in a spiffy box UNLESS you have some REAL value to add in the form of support, consultation, customisation, hardware, etc.
I guess I just still don't understand the free software movement as a business.
the Free software movement ISN'T a business--it is a software development philosophy, and it is clear you don't have a full grasp of it. Obviously if you are a software developme
I remember way back in the mid 1990s stumbling on "the web page from hell" joke site--it was full of blinking text and animated GIFs, all arranged in tables (I think they were nested 5 levels deep) in a hundred or so cells. It made a reasonable machine of the day (a P90 running ancient Netscape Navigator) cry in protest. In a tiny box in amongst all the glitz was "This is the actual article, brought to you by all or generous sponsors. Please read on for some really interest...CONTINUE".
Seriously, the useful-content-to-advertising-noise-ratio on CIO.COM is so absurdly low that it rivals that joke site without exaggeration. It is also a sad commentary on the state of the web when one complaint in the feedback is met with several "stop whining and just use the print link" comments. Firstly, it is called a "print link" not a "read article" link--you've already clicked the link to view the article! Second, stylesheets have made print buttons obsolete--every single graphical browser under current development today supports the use of stylesheets with different media types, such that just using the print function of the browser will produce proper hard-copy layout. It seems the average web user is now used to--and even expects--migrane-inducing, bandwidth-wasting, low-content sites.
That cruddy, advertising-overloaded layout on CIO.COM is one "innovation" from the online porno/gambling/spamming industry the net could really do without.
What if the user is signing up to get an email address, and isn't able to/willing to supply another?
Part of the reason email validation is falling by the wayside is that in these days of spam, users do not trust a new site enough to keep their email address out of the hands of spammers. You may eliminate 100% of your spam, but you might just eliminate (or severely reduce) the number of new users who are real human beings. Furthermore, too many phishing schemes have made many people a bit paranoid about clicking on links--if they were burned by the scam once they might want to be sure the forum isn't a front for phishers to collect personal info.
The other issue is that email validation can be defeated too if it is not carefully crafted. If email validation makes a resurgence then spammers will direct their efforts to that technique as well--first, by scanning for links to follow for validation (easy to look for the A tag, or http-something), then if the email is altered to show a bitmap and instructions to type the link manually you get into the same cat-and-mouse game we already have with captchas. To catch email scanners you might even have to use a captcha on your verification page! So, in the end you've just made it more annoying to sign up for your site.
Ultimately, your other approaches are going to be the only workable solution--checking referrers, blocking of known spam clients, applying email-spam heuristics to your blog/discussion posts and so on. This, of course, will have to be used alongside captchas as a front-line defense. Personally, I don't mind the use of simple quizzes, word puzzles, etc. over the traditional try-to-squint-and-see-the-gibberish method. Not only does it filter out spammers, it could also be used as a stupidity-filter which might improve the quality of discussion on many forums.
MSFT isn't trying too hard to sell license agreements to its unspecified patents because it would mean they'd have to specify which patents it believes are in conflict with Linux. Furthermore, I think the fact that MS is not getting any net revenue from these deals is an indicator of what they believe they are realistically worth (ie. so little that they have to pay people to take them). These patents are legal FUD-distribution-tools and have no significant merit beyond that.
These are all CROSS-licensing deals, and I'm sure they are loaded down with legalese to obfuscate their true intent. MSFT is enticing the likes of Novell, LG, Fuji with millions in cash and indemnification, but in return it is giving MSFT unfettered access to their own patents/technologies. More importantly, even if they retain ownership of their own patents, MSFT will have some degree of CONTROL over those patents too. In effect, MSFT is bribing these other companies in exchange for the ability to pull some corporate stings.
Here is a chilling example: Suppose LG is releasing a Linux-based smart-phone, and early signs are that it is such a killer device that they intend to release it world-wide and it stands to severely blunt market penetration for Windows smart-phones in the US. MSFT's "Linux interoperability team" is all over the device, as the agreement with LG entitles them to be, and identify a couple of possible patents that may apply to a GPL package used in the Linux OS of that device. MSFT says "we like your product LG, but you can't go violating the license agreements established by the authors of library 'X'--that's piracy and we can't abide by that". The copyright holders have stated will not change the license for LG (even GPL2 places limits on the ability to encumber the license with patent licensing fees and such). This is enough to scuttle the launch of the Linux phone for awhile.
MSFT would be happy at that point, but LG still wants to launch this phone, and now it has to re-invent the wheel to do so. Enter the crack "Linux interoperability team" from MSFT to save the day and help write a replacement library that is "unencumbered" (it might even be some kind of "shared source" terms, but not the nasty viral GPL). Now MSFT has some control over a Linux device, and has contaminated the embedded distro with a license under its terms. Even if it doesn't realise revenue directly from the LG product, it has now effectively locked out all but LG from creating a similar product using the critical GPLed code. Motorola, for example, might want to make a similar product, and now it will scared into dealing with MSFT to use the patented technology.
This gives MSFT a lot of power over those who've been bribed. All MSFT has to do to kill the above-mentioned GPLed library is to "generously" give away the right to use its patents so long as you use the MSFT-blessed code (or alternative code under a MSFT-blessed license). They are trying to set up to "embrace, extend and exterminate" the Free software community. Bribery is a much more effective way to "embrace" someone than extortion.
Unlike oil or other real commodities, the density of memory continues to increase as process technology improves. This means you can't stockpile memory chips, because the technology does become outdated.
Actually, a great many commodities are indeed similar to memory in that they become outdated--particularly agricultural/food commodities (pork bellies, orange juice, etc) because they are perishable. Because of the fast pace of enhancement DRAM is, in fact, a perishable commodity. Perishable commodities are in fact stockpiled as well, and when the supply is mismanaged it can have a dramatic effect on the market price of such commodities. With the outbreak of BSE in cattle both live cattle and beef prices went all over the place: first going into free fall as stockpiles of animals and meat went up, then they started to rise as meat processors had to cover costs of disposing of that stockpile (such products cannot last forever, even frozen--and the costs of storage for perishable products is quite high too). The sae thing happens with memory--manufacturers misjudged and stockpiled RAM in anticipation of Vista, and the effect will be somewhat similar to what happens with, for example, milk, orange juice or beef--big drop in price followed by an upward climb in the future as producers recover losses in the next cycle.
You are right about the fact that over time, you do get more memory for less, buth THAT IS EXACTLY MY POINT--a rollercoaster climbs up to a high point, then comes down, then up (but not to the high point) then down, then up (again, not as high as last time), but the long term trend is downward.
By the way, in the past couple of years, memory densities have NOT increased as dramatically as they have during some other points in time, though when a new type of memory does come out it does have quite an impact on the supply of the older technology sue to the disruption in th supply/demand curves (sudden drop-off in demand means supply must adjust downward, causing prices to go down, at which point manufacturers restrict output at a point where there is a slight shortage, making the older technology considerably more expensive per gig than current technology).
Haven't memory prices dropped every day since it were introduced?
In fact they have NOT. Memory is, more than any other component in your PC, a true commodity, and it can be a volatile one at that. Like the market for gasoline it can sometimes be open to manipulation in the same way, though the major players are less apt to participate in collusion as petroleum refiners are notorious for doing.
I distinctly remember an incident involving a fire at a major DRAM manufacturing facility which produced a step change downward in global production capacity--this at a time when demand continued to grow at a healthy clip. Prices spiked even faster, and with a greater magnitude by far, than fuel prices did when hurricane Katrina took out all that refining capacity (we are talking doubling and tripling of prices here). In another incident it wasn't a drop in supply but a surge in demand sparked by the first Christmas season with Windows XP-equipped PCs for sale--inventory dried up and DRAM prices doubled.
aybe this is more to do with lifespan of memory than anything, changing design and automatically expiring themselves from the market.
That can have an effect on DRAM prices actually, except that the effect is opposite to what is happening today: when new memory formats come out it usually fuels demand and raises prices. Demand instead has been flat and prices have dropped. The problem is overcompensation to deal with the release of Vista (they were trying to avoid what happened when XP came out). Memory makers are lousy commodity managers in comparison to how those who produce gasoline, grain, metals, etc and really botched up--but MS also botched up and made the problem worse:
* Vista missed Christmas--it was in limited, corporate-and-developer-only release until January. Not only did this mean the vista launch couldn't take advantage of the shopping season, it also meant that the shopping season for computers itself was blunted as shoppers turned elsewhere for gift ideas (why buy a PC with crufty old XP when spiffy new Vista will be out and pre-installed on machines within weeks?). No demand there
* Though XP needs a relatively modest increase in resource requirements compared to its direct ancestor Windows 2000, the vast majority of the first XP adopters were moving from the DOS-based line of Windows (95/98/Me) and of all things what XP wanted the most over DOS-based Windows was RAM. DOS-based windows couldn't even properly use RAM over a certain level and most machines got to a certain level and stayed there because performance was maxed out. With XP, an old Win98 box could be make quite usable for a cheap price by simply plugging in more RAM. This fueled demand, which raised RAM prices.
* XP has been out for a VERY long time, and between all the service packs, updates and the demanding games and applications released in the past 5 years the demand for RAM has increased gradually even as the base OS is little unchanged. As Vista was released the minimum requirements were already met by most PCs up to a year old. This wasn't the case with XP, where so many crufty old PCs running Win98 were not up to the task of running XP.
* Vista is not different enough from XP to matter - turn off aero glass and to the casual user you have XP with a new UI theme--not much immediately useful comes right to mind. When XP came out it was targeted at legions of 98 and Me users, and 98 and Me were great stinking piles of crap compared to XP. Vista IS meaningfully better architecturally speaking but these advantages are only understood by computer scientists and software engineers. Furthermore, in the cutthroat market of PCs most new PCs are equipped with the featureless "home basic" edition, and that is what most users see, and that edition is well served by existing memory configs.
DRAM prices are like rollercoasters--they might have started at the top and will end up at the bottom, but all these external forces introduce "waves" that go up as well as d
the high levels of sodium and fat do not cause a "low level malaise" in any physical sense from a single meal
From personal experience I can tell you it only takes a single meal at McD's to cause negative effects. Ask a diabetic and they'll tell you that a single meal or snack most certainly DOES have a drastic effect on their blood sugar levels, so you can imagine how much work your pancreas and internal organs have to do to deal with such a meal when they DO work properly.
In fact any doctor or biologist would tell you that a single meal of greasy fries, burger and sugary drink most certainly WOULD have a very nearly immediate negative effect on ANY person who would consume it. The magnitude and exact nature of that effect varies however, especially in how it is perceived. Most normal people, even having not eaten fast food in a long time and not used to it, would at most feel lethargic after such a meal (the effects would be small and temporary). Some might get a headache or a stomach ache, or get constipated. A single fast food meal consumed by someone with allergies to the ingredients could cause severe illness or even death. In any case, the effect is present even with a single fast-food meal whether you perceive it or not.
You would have to eat multiple meals at McDonald's in the span of a day or two in order to cause any negative physical effects
As you mentioned, our diets are supposed to be "naturally varied". If you regularly ate at McD's for too long you'd be reducing that variation, and could be conditioning your body to such a diet--it would cause negative effects but the body would adjust in some way to live with those effects (including shifting the balance of your brain chemistry which alters perception and mood), but the effects are still there and can be cumulative.
Of course moderation is the key--it just seems that most people have lost site of moderation. The negative effects on your body from eating a single fast food meal are small and temporary but will accumulate if you do not give your body enough time to deal with them. Multiple meals is obviously excessive...however so is one meal a day. In fact, 3 meals PER WEEK is considered by many dieticians to be the point where the negative effects may start to accumulate, so if you eat more than 3 fast food meals in a week you are subjecting your body to ill effects of such food faster than your body can process them, and at that point your body starts to make adjustments to live with those effects and even though your cholesterol is elevated, your body fat is too high, blood sugars are out of whack, etc you still "feel fine" even as the ill effects continue to accumulate as they did before.
Well, where I live most electricity is generated as follows:
1. Energy stored in coal->heat energy through combustion 2. Heat energy->mechanical energy through use of steam to drive a turbine 3. mechanical energy->electrical energy through the use of a generator attached to the steam turbine
There is also natural gas, which simply takes the place of coal and uses the same number of energy conversions, and nuclear power, in which step one is simply changed to "energy stored in Uranium->heat energy through nuclear fission". Same number of conversions for all of that, except that step 1 is more efficient (less waste energy loss).
Now there is also "tree hugger power" - hydroelectric, wind and solar generation which may have fewer conversions, however the efficiency is lousy! You need huge, environment-destroying dams or you need to bulldoze thousands of acres of nature to put up windmills or solar cells. Why stop global warming if we have to destroy nature to do it, right?
Well, here we have a new solution:
1. stored energy -> heat through whatever process (combustion, fission, fuel cell, even waste heat from other processes) 2. heat -> sound with these new "prime movers" 3. sound -> electricity through piezoelectric effect
There are exactly the same number of steps/energy conversions as with the way we make power now, except now we have vastly more efficient replacements for the last two steps--something we haven't seriously had! The overall efficiency of such a a system is the product of the efficiencies of all the steps, so we could make great gains with such a process. This technique could be used to replace solar panels as well, because even though solar panels do direct conversion, they only convert 12 percent of the solar energy they capture into electricity. In order to match performance of traditional solar panels each step need only be 50 percent efficient (.5 *.5 *.5 =.125). Thermal solar collectors can readily be made to match or exceed that and apparently it is achievable with these sound tubes and piezoelectric pickups. Though it is while off, this is definitely more than hype and does not rely on violating the laws of thermodynamics in order to be a viable method of electricity generation.
The reason why you feel like crap when eating something unusual is because you've allowed that consumption to lax and your body has adjusted to that diet. It does not follow that eating at Wendy's occasionally makes people ill. It makes YOU ill because your body is no longer accustomed to it.
Actually by in large it isn't because you aren't used to the food--it is because you aren't used to feeling like crap. Much of the adjustment your body makes to a particular diet is actually mental perception. Yes, your body does make adjustments to sustained exposure to certain diets so it is better prepared to handle, for example, a diet of Big Macs, fries and pop. However, the result of that is basically a sustained low-level feeling of malaise. Since that "feeling like crap" state is of constant intensity (it doesn't come and go) your mental perception of your state of health is that it is normal.
When I was younger I was a great fan of McDonalds, then one day I got ill from what was probably an undercooked Quarter Pounder (the burgers never made me ill previously). I was put off from McD's for awhile (almost a year) then I tried it out again and "felt like crap". Since then (almost 15 years now) I've tried eating a burger at McD's on occasion and each and every time it makes me feel like crap. I'm sure that they aren't ALL mis-prepared so I'm guessing it is mostly mental perception--not being used to the effects of such food on my body and the memory of that one bad burger years ago.
Point is, you can't trust mental perception. Occasional consumption of McD's is NOT harmful to anyone (except perhaps those with severe allergies to any ingredients they use), but everyone's mental perception is different. You might "get used to it" but the body is still dealing with it.
Slashdot Mirror
...to this article, being that it seems virtually devoid of morality?
Mr. Chesbrough isn't even subtle about it either--he openly advocates "selective enforcement" of the law to maintain dominance and smother the competition. He goes on further to explain how as a market goes from creation and growth phases into maturity (ie. they have their users trapped) that MS should then suddenly ramp up enforcement and start collecting payback. This is how drug dealers and the mafia operate, not how legitimate businesses are supposed to operate!
Either this clown is as ethically challenged as an Enron accountant or else he is a masterful troll. I can only hope it is the latter and he is trying to bring "A Modest Proposal" into the information age. I'd be careful if I were him though, because over the years, MS has gradually been moving towards the "Mafia business model" and is very nearly there: They already have the opinion that "if the Chinese are pirating it should at least be our stuff", have "favourite customers" that pay only a small fraction of the US retail price...and they are already making patent "protection money" deals with skittish Linux companies. They need no more encouragement from the likes of Business Week and its editors.
Atari even knew it was crap, by calling its operating system "TOS"
TOS was unofficially known as "Tramiel Operating System". I believe Ol' Jack had a pretty well-inflated ego.
The Atart ST most certainly was NOT "crap", though it was far from being technically superior to the Amiga, at least when they were initially introduced. There were a few points in Atari's favour that gave it an edge over the Amiga in niche applications:
* It has MIDI ports built in and superior music sequencer software. Atari's and Macs were the musicians choice, and the Atari was particularly appealing because the MIDI ports weren't an add-on and the price point was lower than the Mac. The built-in sound was crappy (only on par with my Coleco computer) and the Amiga had great stereo sound--but not good enough for professional sound production, which at the time always used the output of professional MIDI-connected instruments over the built-in sound of computers.
* It had superior display choices than the Amiga (I mean image quality, not in terms of graphics performance/colours/resolution of the computer itself). The Atari ST had very good video output signals and the monitors were of matching quality. The monochrome monitor was small but very crisp and easy on the eyes, making it ideal for desktop publishing. The Atari ST was thought better than the Amiga by many for desktop publishing for print media. Amiga was obviously king of VIDEO production as the Amiga designers put a priority on NTSC and PAL compatibility over visual crispness.
* The ST had the same CPU running 12 percent faster than in the US Amiga (and I think the Euro Amiga was a bit slower yet). Raw mathematical operations that couldn't use the co-processors in the Amiga ran faster on the ST. The Amiga's clock speed was a multiple of the "colourburst" frequencies of colour television signals. That is why the Amiga didn't fully clock the 68K CPU--the slightly slower rate made it work much better with video equipment (making genlocks, etc. trivial to do).
The Amiga overall was technically far more sophisticated than the ST because its origins come from video game design. Amiga was engineered by a team composed largely of ex Atari engineers who were responsible for the 8-bit line of Atari computers and consoles. In fact, it shows in the architecture of both machines as they both made extensive use of purpose-built coprocessors (TIA, GTIA, POKEY, etc in the Atari 8-bits and Paula, Denise, Agnes, etc in the Amiga). Amiga didn't start out as a Comomdore machine of course--it was originally the "Lorraine Project" form the Amiga corporation (whose released products were mainly aftermarket game controllers--the revenue used to fund Lorraine). Lorraine was to be the engine for a high-end console, but this was the post-shakeout console market and there was little appetite by investors to enter what was thought to be a market killed by cheap home computers.
Amiga needed help with releasing the Lorraine as a product. Since Amiga was formed bye ex-Atari engineers, they approached Atari (recently acquitred by ex-Commodore head Tramiel) to license the chipset to be used in a next-generation Atari product--and since Tramiel was king of Atari now it was probably going to be a computer. Commodore was quite threatened by this obviously, and to add insult to injury they were losing talented Tramiel loyalists to Atari. Commodore couldn't let this happen, so they swooped in and bought Amiga corp--this abruptly ended their negotiations with Atari, and also for some reason meant the discontinuation of its entire line of Amiga game controllers. So, in actual fact the Amiga was probably the REAL successor to the Atari 8-bit line as it shares much more heritage with the Atari 800 than the Atari ST does (with a similar design philosophy--right down to naming their projects after women...Pam, Colleen...Lorraine).
Of course, Tramiel was steamed that Commodore would do such a thing (and wasn't all that happy with Jay Miner and co eith
I've not yet had to change my hose address yet with so haven't encountered that problem yet. I can view and pay my bills, and change my service features, online using FF without problem.
:-).
Drivers' licenses are provincially administered--it looks like you are from Ontario and I am from Alberta (so yeah, I guess you might consider my home "opposite land"). Alberta government services websites have given me relatively little trouble. Alberta's gov't is has been a bit more "forward thinking" than Ontario's (though the post-Ralph Tories seem a bit tired nowadays) and a lot of things are handled differently. Most of Registry Services (which does driver's licenses) are contracted out to approved registry agents...so there are actually many choices out there, not just one government-owned site, that may provide online services. If one registry doesn't meet your needs, just go to a competitor. I've used the Alberta Motor Association's website before and it seems to work fine in FireFox.
As for Pizza Pizza, they don't have stores in my province. I usually phone in fast food deliveries anyways. Here we have "Pizza 73". Their online order site works just fine on FireFox
Life here in "opposite land Alverta" is grand
...but it'll basically be relegated to niche markets in the years to come.
Obviously desktops have advantages and laptops have advantages. You don't want to lug around a 22 inch screen on your laptop but for your desktop, you want that. You're not going to get the latest and greatest hardware on a laptop, but you can on a desktop.
Laptops are the winners here though--laptops CAN be had in very cutting-edge configurations, and when you get into that performance level both the laptop and desktop form factors get pretty expensive--and when you factor in all peripherals you need for a desktop that are integrated into a laptop then the price gap closes quite a bit. Also, the full sized display, keyboard and mouse is not a huge advantage for the desktop because all laptops can be plugged into those components when at the desk anyways. The only difference with the desktop is with price at that point.
The jobs that are better suited to a desktop are pretty limited I think, so therefore I think it'll be a niche market consisting of:
1. ultra-budget market (think the $300 system from Wal-Mart) for the starving student, pensioner, etc who wants a "good enough" PC for essential tasks
2. entry-level server market--for small and medium operations that want a value priced server solution that doesn't require rack mounting hardware, yet has the physical capacity to hold RAID configurations and be upgradable and expandable.
3. "geek hobbyist" market--hardcore gamers, system builders who like to pick and choose "best of breed" at a component level and the rice-burner-pimp-my-ride case-customisers.
The one advantage that desktops had aside from a price advantage was expandability/upgradability. However, as with price advantage narrowing there is not advantage in upgrading beyond boosting hard drive and memory anymore--it makes more economic sense to replace beyond that, and laptops are already easily expandable in terms of memory and hard drives.
They have to be smart enough to know how to spend it too.
The Feds would have the $$$ and be able to hire the skill labor to build some pretty sophisticated spyware tools.
The feds had $170 MILLION to spend to modernise their case management system from one based mostly on paper files augmented by a crufty old mainframe that could only manage or search textual data, to a modern, enterprise-class computer system called the "Virtual Case File" system. The contract was awarded in 2001 (just BEFORE 9/11), and to this day the VCF is STILL essentially non-functional!
Instead of examining what off-the-shelf case management/collaboration/etc software had to offer (whether Free software or not) they opted to let the vendor decide how to proceed--giving them very little in terms of restrictions or system requirements. The developers chose--for their supposed ENTERPRISE-CLASS solution in late 2001--to CUSTOM DEVELOP a FOXPRO application...to handle ALL the case files for ALL the FBI! For $170M There was no test plan, and no migration strategy--they intended to just install it and turn it on and use all of it right away for all new and currently active files. Well, at least they managed to get new computers on most agent's desks (theones who had nothing but a 3270 terminal anyways) for the money.
Somehow it wouldn't surprise me if the feds' "sophisticated" spyware tools relied heavily on script-kiddie toolkits, social engineering tricks (Click here for horse porn! Free screen savers!) and so on...an it probably works only with Windows computers (despite having the same unrestricted access to Linux source code as everypne else I'm betting FBI and CIA types haven't clued in to making Linux rootkits yet). Remember we aren't talking about NSA or other scientific-research-oriented departments here--their "intelligence" seems confined by some fairly restrictive bounds.
..don't they eventually leave each other?
I changed ISPs because my decent one was swallowed up by TELUS which royally messed up my nice little setup--they warned me that it would happen, but didn't say exactly what would happen or exactly when.
I went with "basic small business service" from a company called Radiant--it is the same kind of DSL, largely riding on the same TELUS networks, but Radiant does the admin. I get multiple fixed IPs, no ridiculous bandwidth caps, and tech support is staffed with actual techs. My plan is basic--CONNECTIVITY ONLY. They do not provide me with email addresses, do not host domains, don't block ports or provide firewalls or proxies or anything on their end--they offer those services with other more expensive packages.
One thing they DO regualrly do is scan their entire network and have tripwire-like software to alert them to problems. Within minutes they can find open mail relays, worm-infested IIS servers and so on--at which point ALL traffic involving the affected MAC address is blocked until theproblem is resolved. This is a very nice policy for professional services compared to the block-and-filter-by-default policy of residential/consumer service.
In any case I now have the freedom to establish my OWN firewall policies, host my OWN email and webservers, set up MY OWN VPN and whatever else--so I don't have to rely on the ISP to make sure those things are online and properly configured, whether it is filtering false-positive-SPAM without telling me, or imposing file attachment and mailbox size restrictions I don't like. I can use apache with mod-perl and whatever database and Perl or PHP scripting to my hearts content, all with my ISPs blessing, because if my server grinds to a halt it really only affects me.
I love the idea of "connectivity only" service and very few ISPs seem willing to offer it. At the consumer/residential level, there should be that kind of service too, with just a single DHCP address supplied behind a simple NAT firewall so a person can just plug and go. Really who needs an email address from their ISP nowadays anyways, when everybody has an email address through work, or gmail, or hotmail or yahoo already? The less they have to offer, the lower the cost for the same or better reliability and bandwidth (I pay almost the same for my service as some others in the US pay for crappy Comcast like service). How many people actually USE their ISP's web pages and CDs and whatnot? Even my retired parents almost exclusively use their hotmail accounts because, even as relative beginners on computers, they realise that they can't be bothered with the pain of an email address that cannot move between ISPs. I think a LOT of people would go for under-$20/month 2.5Mb/s DSL "connectivity only".
The techs like to use a CD installer which uses Internet Explorer to configure the cable modem. ...would be able to use their own PC or equipment to do this. When I had DSL installed in 1999 the tech was a bit confounded at my Linux box and couldn't use his Windows CD on my machine. It was a little inconvenient for him perhaps but nothing insurmountable. He used the serial "terminal" port and my miniterm to do it (hypertermnal or any other sort of thing would work too). The DSL modem I have today still has a terminal port.
These days most people where I am use the self-install kits (even those who are not "geeks"). With the address on the sticker affixed to the modem they can remotely configure, or you can configure yourself (unconfigured modems typically direct all HTTP to a config page, which works in any browser). My preset DSL provider doesn't even need any numbers--just your name and billing address for verification.
It floors me when I STILL see those stupid CDs--all they do is mess up your PC ad I tell people that I'm helping out that the first step is to throw away the install CD if you got one from your ISP.
The Rogers website works very poorly with Firefox [especially without flash]
Rogers handles my phone service but not my internet, however I've had no problems paying my bills using FF at their site, granted they do rely on Flash too much. I've viewed the PDF formatted bills in Linux just fine, though they are somewhat glitchy when I try to print them (I've only even bothered to do that once--why waste paper when you pay online anyways?)
The Canadian government is going the same way sadly. CRA, MOT and a few others don't render at all in Firefox, or when they do select elements fail and make the pages useless.
Actually, the government seems to be going the OPPOSITE way--in my experience they have been slowly but steadily IMPROVING cross-platform support. I filed my tax return with FF, and used FF (on Linux, no less) to get my passport. My beef is that they over-engineer their sites. Why are things like passport applications and census questionnaires implemented using big, slow, Java (cr)applets when normal secure web forms suffice for most banks, provincial gov'ts, etc?
And the worse part is though they have to go out of their way to break things.
I don't think they go out of their way to break Firefox, Linux or any other particular target--they go out of their way to be needlessly complex though, and complexity leads to fragility. Remember we are dealing with big-old-telcos and governments here--their developers are paid by the hour, often work there because they can't find work elsewhere, or don't want to because it's low stress, etc. They don't seem bound to schedules or budgets (though you wouldn't know it by the terms of some of their contracts--but in-house is different).
Anyways, you CAN get these sites to work on macs, linux, whatever browser (in fact, CRA specifically supports FireFox by name, and if you use an unmentioned browser like Epiphany it doesn't block you--it merely warns you). The problem is that they do craptacular things like over-use flash or java for no logical reason at all, so if you find you are having trouble, you should first make sure you've filled up on the requisite plug-ins before cursing them as Microsoft lackeys.
Pizza Pizza also doesn't work in Linux which means I have to boot my Windows laptop to get some chow
Why don't you PHONE Pizza Pizza like normal people would do? I see limited appeal for using the 'net for takeout or delivery fast food. The 'net is more useful when the orders/choices are more complex and/or you have more options like recurring deliveries, etc, which is nice if you get your groceries delivered.
...MS Office and OO.o--I am not a huge fan of either. That doesn't mean you have to settle for "feeling filthy" running MS Office, being frustrated with OO.o or using a text editor to do word processing jobs.
Frankly, what do I think is the best office suite? Office 97 or 2000. Everything after that just went downhill.
[...]
and the rest of the contenders for 'best office suite' crown are nonstarters.
Haven't you given any serious consideration to KOffice or GNOME Office applications? Your post suggests that you would like something that meets all the basic needs but is lightweight, and both are more lightweight and fairly capable and (IMHO) more usable than OO.o OR MS Office. I am not a really huge fan of KOffice apps but I DO find the GNOME ABIWord and GNUmeric applications to be very welcoming to those who yearn for Office 97/2000 type of experiences. GNUmeric in particular is a favourite of mine--it has that snappy, lightweight feel to it yet is better than Excel in that it does calculations better and has a better library of functions for REAL number crunchers.
Anyways, I tend to get a bit frustrated with most office suites because they continue to grow more monolithic (everything gets jammed together into one massive megapackage, which runs counter to "the UNIX way"). I favour the GNOME office apps because they have retained a degree of autonomy from one another that its competitors seem to want to erase.
I'm not sure if many of these points need to be worked around very often, if at all.
1. OpenOffice will never be as compatible with Office as Office is.
Well, WordPerfect used to be king, and MS Word was "mostly compatible" when it came to loading WP files. "Mostly" turned out to be "good enough" when weighing features, especially when things moved into the GUI world. Also, compatibility with competing products is a total non issue for internal use--it is only a concern when dealing with documents generated or consumed outside the business. Keep in mind that the native format for OO.o documents has been submitted as a standard, and there are already de-facto standards like PDF (which is already the preferred method of document exchange with external people with my employer even though we are a Microsoft shop). If the cost savings and other merits outweigh compatibility problems then it need not be a significant barrier to OO.o adoption
2. If you know Office you must learn OpenOffice. Office is taught in every school I know of.
And every schoolchild I know of who is proficient enough to use Office is quite capable of self-teaching themselves around the differences. Also, have you SEEN MS Office 2007? Obviously MS doesn't think UI consistency from version to version is very high on the priority list. Seriously, you CANNOT argue that the learning curve is flatter to go from "classic" MS Office to Office 2007 than it is to go to OO.o, since OO.o looks and works more like old Office than Office 2007 does..and you can bet that MS is NOT giving them a deal to buy a discontinued version of Office.
3. I still don't think Calc is even as good as Excel in Office 2000 but then I haven't really used it a lot in a long time.
Well, you should try it again now, because the gap has closed considerably. Even so, there are open alternatives to Excel AND OO.o calc that ARE superior--most notably Gnumeric. Capability isn't a problem--the alternatives are capable enough or even superior. At issue is compatibility, and as I mentioned it is a limited issue. It IS the biggest pain point for businesses that are Excel junkies however (you know, the ones who have cobbled together a rickety-but-big-and-complex ERP/CRM out of a steaming, macro-and-OLE-object-infested Excel workbook files)--I'll concede that. However, when it comes to using a spreadsheet as intended, Gnumeric is hands down the most pleasant to work with IMHO.
4. Outlooks+Exchange are a better Enterprise calendering system than anything I have seen from FOSS.
The only thing it really beats is Bloated Goats from Infernal Business Machines. There are oodles of calendaring systems out there that are quite capable. Some are quite intriguing. For example, Citadel (the Citadel/UX variant) evolved from BBS into a web-based forum/email/collaboration/groupware system that is incredibly efficient with resources, surprisingly easy to install, configure and maintain and includes a perfectly capable calendaring system that works pretty well with clients like Thunderbird and KOrganiser via GroupDAV. Perhaps MS Exchange is the "ultimate in richness" but Citadel could meet the requirements for the vast majority of users and is WAY more scalable than Exchange.
5. Sharepoint. I haven't seen anything as easy to use from the FOSS community.
The Free Software tools are there for the backend--it is the "easy to use" front end part that presents the biggest challenge. But for the price MS charges for their stuff? You could hire an ambitios young programmer to MAKE it for you for that price.
Microsoft had done some good things, give the devil his due.
Yes, they have some pretty quality stuff out there despite the slagging they get. I'll give the devil his due, but it makes me uncomfortable to have to sell my soul to the devil in order to buy in.
But for listening on high end stereo systems, the CD (and other "little plastic discs") is king.
What you are describing is the "niche market"--the stagnant little puddle. A high bitrate MP3 is of adequate quality for 95 percent of the population, even on quality equipment (and these days quality stereo systems with signal-process away much of the effects of MP3 compression). Then there are 4 percent of people who are quite particular, and their needs can be met with uncompressed digital audio, or lossless compression like FLAC--that media is NOT on little plastic discs and is IDENTICAL to CD in quality (it could even be better if the bitrate is higher). Music CDs are OBSOLETE--period.
There is 1 percent who are audiophiles with OCD--they are so obsessive that they spend tens of thousands to buy stereos made with discrete elecrtonics (sometimes even pre-transistor technology!) and insist that ALL digitally encoded music sounds "cold and tinny". These nuts have record turntables that are spring-mounted and precision-balanced, with ultra-fine diamond styluses and have all the classics on big black vinyl LPs.
If we continue comparing with the typewriter industry, right now there is literally a total monopoly on the manufacture of manual typewriters: Olivetti is the ONLY company on the planet that still builds andsells new manual typewriters, and it is a very tiny part of their business now. Some day that will happen to "little plastic disc distributors" too--either there will be one company that represents the entire industry and even they just do it as a side business, or the industry will be represented my a number of "little minnows", like crunchy-granola-cafes that sell old books off a shelf in the corner.
Selling media content on little plastic discs is obsolete and as such is a shrinking industry. When the pond gets smaller the fish must ether get smaller or some fish must die. That is just life.
Look what happened when computers with word processing software made typewriters obsolete. Should we have had our governments spend millions to prop up the Smith Coronas and Olivettis and Underwoods and enact legislation to restrict the use and functionality of word processing software, or put a tax on computer software to fund concessions for ailing typewriter companies? Of course not, that's a stupid idea and very backward thinking.
That is why Sam died--the "selling plastic discs with music on them" pond is slowly shrinking and Sam was a big old fish set in his ways. Other fish in the pond like HMV ate too much of Sam's food and Sam starved to death. That's just life. Some of those little fish will live on, eking out a modest existence in a little puddle and other fish will evolve into amphibians and hop into another bigger pond with fresher water.
The thing is, things in Canada ARE very rosy indeed relative to our southern neighbours. Our economy is more robust at the moment and demand for media content is obviously strong enough to support some kind of healthy music industry--it's just going to look different. Yes, Sam was an icon of sorts and it's never nice to see an old friend die...but it happened to other old names like Eaton's and the sky didn't fall.
The posted article makes some observation that linux OSes that use RPM have a stagnating market share but provides no argument at all as to why, so I'd say that any intelligent individual would take that as an interesting observation and perhaps a subtle troll. I'm not saying that one package format is better or worse than another, I'm just saying that there is no supporting argument so the statement is just there to be provocative and nothing else.
.deb package but I have built my own .rpm packages a few times and found it to be a rather frustrating experience. I DO have to qualify that by saying it has been awhile and maybe it is better now.
.deb packages with credible arguments defending their position tend to be almost exclusively "hard core"/developer types--the ones who routinely compile tweaked kernels, do a lot of programming, author the packages themselves, etc. Therefore, I'd hazard a guess and say that where .deb and apt shine is in the developer's experience, not the end user's experience. If that really is the case, what package format your OS uses has pretty much no bearing at all on how successful it will be in getting onto users' computers. If ease of software development was the be-all and end-all of end-user acceptance then the Sony PS2 would've been such a dismal failure that Sony wouldn't have stayed
But ignoring that, I wasn't talking about dependency resolution. I was talking about RPM crapping all over its databases periodically, even to the point of refusing to rebuild them and needing a full reinstall.
I use mostly RPM-based distributions and would have to say that what YOU are describing is very strange for a current RPM-based distribution. I personally have NEVER had that happen to my own systems. I know that with the somewhat hasty release of v4 of RPM that there were some fairly serious reliability problems, but wasn't that a problem in Fedora Core about FOUR releases ago? That's like making an argument about how much Windows sucks compared to MacOS X based upon your experiences with NT4. Either you lack recent experience with RPM or you are having similar "unusual experiences" with an RPM-based OS that the frustrated Ubuntu user had with Debian packages.
Oh, that and the truly horrible UI for RPM, that necessitates keeping a cheat sheet around for the bizarre incantations.
This statement makes me think you really DON'T have any meaningful recent experience with RPM-based OSes. The 'rpm' program is no longer used for day-to-day package maintenance by the majority of users, and it is NOT the equivalent to apt nor was it intended to be. To compare varieties of apples you'd be better to compare to apt to something like yum. By avoiding low-level/technical tools like the rpm command line there is no need to perform "bizarre incantations" or keep cheat sheets.
I really do get tired of these weak debates and would like to see actual reasoned arguments as to why, technically and from a "user experience" perspective, why apt is better than yum or vice versa, because though I've played with both I haven't seen anything about one or the other that would have any meaningful impact on my choice of OS. Most often I don't do anything really fancy with my software package management tools--I install, upgrade or uninstall a package here and there, and BOTH have been "good enough" for that purpose--generally speaking, equally reliable and easy to use. I'd say the vast majority of users do nothing but that, and the ONLY people who would even have a reason to care would be developers who build and maintain the packages and repositories themselves. I've never built a
Anyways, since I don't have the "full experience" of both installing AND building packages I'll admit that I cannot say with much credibility which package format is better--and I wish most others would admit that too! The best I can do is make an observation that the most ardent supporters of apt and
I'm not sure that the pricing and configurations offered by Dell indicate any deliberate games playing by Dell--the confusing and dynamic nature of them seem to be a general Dell trait. It's just booking flights online--prices change four times an hour and seem to have a lot of significant variables involved (what country you are browsing in, time of day, tides, phase of moon, barometric pressure and so on).
;-)
I think Slartibartfast might find his spaceship would perform better if he upgraded his systems from bistromaths to multivariable DELLculus or differential airline equations. The relative potential of numbers in the movement of customers through the web pages of either could quite possibly revolutionise interstellar travel
99.9% of the computer using population probably can't do it, or doesn't want to. My point is, they are selling the widget, and the software basically goes along for free.
About the same number of people cannot, or aren't willing to, compile a kernel or configure a server or set up a point-of-sale system or install their home theatre or whatever else--they hire someone to do it for them and the software comes along for the ride. It isn't free-gratis for sure, but it's just part of the cost of the system, just as the cost of non-Free embedded software licensing/royalties/etc is built into a lot of consumer electronic devices. The important thing is to consider where the VALUE lies.
A bunch of computer files, even if it is on a shiny plastic disc and in a box with a glossy printed manual, has little to no intrinsic value on its own. You can plunk down $1000 or more on a box of Windows Server 2003 and it won't do a thing to run your business. It has to be installed and configured on your hardware to do anything useful at all. More and more, having a successful business is about how "value added" it is, so unless you are willing to put a great deal of support and service behind your non-Free application don't expect people to beat down your door. This is an EXTREMELY difficult task for a small upstart to do if it wants to make its presence known amongst the Microsoft's and IBMs. However, with Free software you can leverage the support of the developer and user community behind it and add your own value in the form of consulting, bundling, local, on-site service and so on.
This makes the assumption that, 1) having lost your investment in developing the original, but now worthless (due to being ripped off) application, you have enough resources left to make improvements to it and 2) that improvements can be made that people are willing to pay for.
You REALLY don't get it do you? Your application NEVER HAD ANY WORTH TO BEGIN WITH--even if it is closed source! You can burn it onto a CD and mail it to someone and it is only worth a partially-full used CD! It has POTENTIAL worth, but never had any "real" worth to begin with. There is much more real value in a "solution"--and people WILL AND DO pay for "solutions", and often software licensing is a minority of what they pay even if it is a non-Free solution.
But what I don't understand is how do you do this?
IBM understands it, which is why software licensing is a VERY SMALL part of their revenue stream. They offer VALUE-ADDED services--they take stuff with POTENTIAL value--software and hardware--and creat a solution with REAL value (an ERP system, on-line merchant systems, etc)--they build up this solution and hand it over to the customer and it is working and they use it and get value out of it--right there and then (if it is done right of course). This isn't like non-Free software where when you get it you sill have to install it, configure it, etc before you can use it. This is how things work with business/professional customers--and it works this way at the consumer level surprisingly often as well.
When I buy a VCR, I don't want to pay maintenance to make it work. I don't want to pay maintenance to have access to new and improved versions of it. I just want a stable, reliable product for X dollars, and my transaction with your company is done.
Since VCR's are obsolete I'd not buy one in the first place, but in any case...unlike a lot of software when you buy it it works right there and then...what annoys me is that MSFT and others sell SO MUCH software that is broken out of the box--for the longest time if you put XP on your computer and plugged it into the 'net it would be worm-ridden and unusable in 5 minutes.
Even if you VCR DOES work when you buy it, what happens if it stops working? The cost of warranty service is built in EVERY ner comsumer-electronics device. With closed software, "warranty service" becomes the MAIN cost of the software. Can you imagine the ontol
Why is that a problem? We've been using variants of soybean and canola for industrial purposes for pretty much as long as they've been grown in North America. In South America, there is already a sustainable fuel industry around the sugar cane (and no, it is NOT true that it takes more energy to produce ethanol from plants than you can get out of the ethanol, if it is done right).
The thing about "food stocks" is that when we need more we can just grow more. Conservation is a great idea (and absolutely essential for sustainable management of our environment) but when it comes to non-renewable resources like crude oil it doesn't matter HOW much you try to conserve, you'll eventually reach a point where it's gone and you can't get any more. Ultimately, the only sustainable consumption of a non-renewable resource is ZERO consumption.
Yes, preaching conservation CAN sound like "austerity" but it can also be called "efficiency" which is always a good thing. If we do nothing to explore new technologies to harness renewable energy sources and rely on conservation as our long-term method to sustain our environment then, quite literally and without exaggeration, we would have to live even more austere lives than the Amish--that is, completely stop using non-renewable energy and therefore stop using electricity, heat our homes with woodstoves, stop driving (or even taking the bus). That is not progress by anyone's definition.
But I do know that if my sole /product/ was software, I, too, would be leary about giving away the code for free.
/I/ wouldn't invest in a new product where I couldn't make any money selling the actual product but only support for it.
I would be leery about ANY business where the sole product was software, because ultimately any company starting up today whose sole purpose was to develop and sell a software application as a product is doomed to failure--it will either be swallowed up whole by another company (MSFT) or will die in obscurity. Even in the entertainment software industry, probably the last great hope for closed-source development, the barrier to entry is pretty damn high, and the biggest startup successes lately have been in the "casual gaming" category, where the business model is more around the game as "multimedia content" and revenue is made by advertising and employing an almost "network television" type of model.
In your Linksys example, there is a hardware component that is not easy to replicate - there is a barrier to duplication.
An entry-level router is NOT that hard to replicate. A user inclined to tinker might just use an old PC off ebay as a router--all it takes is a compact Linux or BSD distro and some spare network cards and some time. Furthermore, there are many players out there with competitive products that have non-Free embedded software and it hasn't proven to be of particular advantage to them to be more proprietary than Linksys--in fact it is to their disadvantage as tinkerers opt to go for the more open solution automatically.
But I don't understand how this works with a pure software product. If you give it away to the world, then someone else is just going to take the code and make a derivative product from it that does the same thing but is free.
Well, that might happen with a BSD-style license, though at least the world will know YOU did it because of the attribution requirements of the BSD license (that is how we know that MSFT couldn't be bothered to write their own TCP/IP stack for NT so they just lifted a BSD-licensed one). GPL, however, does its best to ensure a wide-open, level playing field. Yes, a competitor could undercut you by giving away a derivative product for free, but he has to play by the rules and let everyone see HIS code too, or you can quite rightly slap him with a copyright-infringement lawsuit. So, if that is what happens, jsut take this derivative product back, improve it even more and one-up him.
Well, *I* wouldn't invest in any venture that was focused on selling software as a product and treated service and support as afterthoughts.
As I said, if your business model relies on selling a copy of software like it was a widget you will be doomed to failure, so you'd better adjust your business model. In return for revenue you must add value. From an end-user perspective, there is ZERO value in a software license--it doesn't make their lives easier or make their business more productive or efficient. Generally licensing is one big pile of bullsh!t for a user--he has to punch in product keys here, activate software there, insert dongle god-knows-where to remove some deliberately-engineered artificial constraints on what he can do with his computer. GPL keeps the bull to a minimum for the end user--if you redistribute you must make source available on request which is no burden at all to end users.
That said, I think it is very hard to justify more than a few dollars it takes to produce and ship a shiny plastic disc and a printed manual in a spiffy box UNLESS you have some REAL value to add in the form of support, consultation, customisation, hardware, etc.
I guess I just still don't understand the free software movement as a business.
the Free software movement ISN'T a business--it is a software development philosophy, and it is clear you don't have a full grasp of it. Obviously if you are a software developme
...for worst commercial website of the year!
I remember way back in the mid 1990s stumbling on "the web page from hell" joke site--it was full of blinking text and animated GIFs, all arranged in tables (I think they were nested 5 levels deep) in a hundred or so cells. It made a reasonable machine of the day (a P90 running ancient Netscape Navigator) cry in protest. In a tiny box in amongst all the glitz was "This is the actual article, brought to you by all or generous sponsors. Please read on for some really interest...CONTINUE".
Seriously, the useful-content-to-advertising-noise-ratio on CIO.COM is so absurdly low that it rivals that joke site without exaggeration. It is also a sad commentary on the state of the web when one complaint in the feedback is met with several "stop whining and just use the print link" comments. Firstly, it is called a "print link" not a "read article" link--you've already clicked the link to view the article! Second, stylesheets have made print buttons obsolete--every single graphical browser under current development today supports the use of stylesheets with different media types, such that just using the print function of the browser will produce proper hard-copy layout. It seems the average web user is now used to--and even expects--migrane-inducing, bandwidth-wasting, low-content sites.
That cruddy, advertising-overloaded layout on CIO.COM is one "innovation" from the online porno/gambling/spamming industry the net could really do without.
What ever happened to email validation?
What if the user is signing up to get an email address, and isn't able to/willing to supply another?
Part of the reason email validation is falling by the wayside is that in these days of spam, users do not trust a new site enough to keep their email address out of the hands of spammers. You may eliminate 100% of your spam, but you might just eliminate (or severely reduce) the number of new users who are real human beings. Furthermore, too many phishing schemes have made many people a bit paranoid about clicking on links--if they were burned by the scam once they might want to be sure the forum isn't a front for phishers to collect personal info.
The other issue is that email validation can be defeated too if it is not carefully crafted. If email validation makes a resurgence then spammers will direct their efforts to that technique as well--first, by scanning for links to follow for validation (easy to look for the A tag, or http-something), then if the email is altered to show a bitmap and instructions to type the link manually you get into the same cat-and-mouse game we already have with captchas. To catch email scanners you might even have to use a captcha on your verification page! So, in the end you've just made it more annoying to sign up for your site.
Ultimately, your other approaches are going to be the only workable solution--checking referrers, blocking of known spam clients, applying email-spam heuristics to your blog/discussion posts and so on. This, of course, will have to be used alongside captchas as a front-line defense. Personally, I don't mind the use of simple quizzes, word puzzles, etc. over the traditional try-to-squint-and-see-the-gibberish method. Not only does it filter out spammers, it could also be used as a stupidity-filter which might improve the quality of discussion on many forums.
...it is committing bribery.
MSFT isn't trying too hard to sell license agreements to its unspecified patents because it would mean they'd have to specify which patents it believes are in conflict with Linux. Furthermore, I think the fact that MS is not getting any net revenue from these deals is an indicator of what they believe they are realistically worth (ie. so little that they have to pay people to take them). These patents are legal FUD-distribution-tools and have no significant merit beyond that.
These are all CROSS-licensing deals, and I'm sure they are loaded down with legalese to obfuscate their true intent. MSFT is enticing the likes of Novell, LG, Fuji with millions in cash and indemnification, but in return it is giving MSFT unfettered access to their own patents/technologies. More importantly, even if they retain ownership of their own patents, MSFT will have some degree of CONTROL over those patents too. In effect, MSFT is bribing these other companies in exchange for the ability to pull some corporate stings.
Here is a chilling example: Suppose LG is releasing a Linux-based smart-phone, and early signs are that it is such a killer device that they intend to release it world-wide and it stands to severely blunt market penetration for Windows smart-phones in the US. MSFT's "Linux interoperability team" is all over the device, as the agreement with LG entitles them to be, and identify a couple of possible patents that may apply to a GPL package used in the Linux OS of that device. MSFT says "we like your product LG, but you can't go violating the license agreements established by the authors of library 'X'--that's piracy and we can't abide by that". The copyright holders have stated will not change the license for LG (even GPL2 places limits on the ability to encumber the license with patent licensing fees and such). This is enough to scuttle the launch of the Linux phone for awhile.
MSFT would be happy at that point, but LG still wants to launch this phone, and now it has to re-invent the wheel to do so. Enter the crack "Linux interoperability team" from MSFT to save the day and help write a replacement library that is "unencumbered" (it might even be some kind of "shared source" terms, but not the nasty viral GPL). Now MSFT has some control over a Linux device, and has contaminated the embedded distro with a license under its terms. Even if it doesn't realise revenue directly from the LG product, it has now effectively locked out all but LG from creating a similar product using the critical GPLed code. Motorola, for example, might want to make a similar product, and now it will scared into dealing with MSFT to use the patented technology.
This gives MSFT a lot of power over those who've been bribed. All MSFT has to do to kill the above-mentioned GPLed library is to "generously" give away the right to use its patents so long as you use the MSFT-blessed code (or alternative code under a MSFT-blessed license). They are trying to set up to "embrace, extend and exterminate"
the Free software community. Bribery is a much more effective way to "embrace" someone than extortion.
Unlike oil or other real commodities, the density of memory continues to increase as process technology improves. This means you can't stockpile memory chips, because the technology does become outdated.
Actually, a great many commodities are indeed similar to memory in that they become outdated--particularly agricultural/food commodities (pork bellies, orange juice, etc) because they are perishable. Because of the fast pace of enhancement DRAM is, in fact, a perishable commodity. Perishable commodities are in fact stockpiled as well, and when the supply is mismanaged it can have a dramatic effect on the market price of such commodities. With the outbreak of BSE in cattle both live cattle and beef prices went all over the place: first going into free fall as stockpiles of animals and meat went up, then they started to rise as meat processors had to cover costs of disposing of that stockpile (such products cannot last forever, even frozen--and the costs of storage for perishable products is quite high too). The sae thing happens with memory--manufacturers misjudged and stockpiled RAM in anticipation of Vista, and the effect will be somewhat similar to what happens with, for example, milk, orange juice or beef--big drop in price followed by an upward climb in the future as producers recover losses in the next cycle.
You are right about the fact that over time, you do get more memory for less, buth THAT IS EXACTLY MY POINT--a rollercoaster climbs up to a high point, then comes down, then up (but not to the high point) then down, then up (again, not as high as last time), but the long term trend is downward.
By the way, in the past couple of years, memory densities have NOT increased as dramatically as they have during some other points in time, though when a new type of memory does come out it does have quite an impact on the supply of the older technology sue to the disruption in th supply/demand curves (sudden drop-off in demand means supply must adjust downward, causing prices to go down, at which point manufacturers restrict output at a point where there is a slight shortage, making the older technology considerably more expensive per gig than current technology).
Haven't memory prices dropped every day since it were introduced?
In fact they have NOT. Memory is, more than any other component in your PC, a true commodity, and it can be a volatile one at that. Like the market for gasoline it can sometimes be open to manipulation in the same way, though the major players are less apt to participate in collusion as petroleum refiners are notorious for doing.
I distinctly remember an incident involving a fire at a major DRAM manufacturing facility which produced a step change downward in global production capacity--this at a time when demand continued to grow at a healthy clip. Prices spiked even faster, and with a greater magnitude by far, than fuel prices did when hurricane Katrina took out all that refining capacity (we are talking doubling and tripling of prices here). In another incident it wasn't a drop in supply but a surge in demand sparked by the first Christmas season with Windows XP-equipped PCs for sale--inventory dried up and DRAM prices doubled.
aybe this is more to do with lifespan of memory than anything, changing design and automatically expiring themselves from the market.
That can have an effect on DRAM prices actually, except that the effect is opposite to what is happening today: when new memory formats come out it usually fuels demand and raises prices. Demand instead has been flat and prices have dropped. The problem is overcompensation to deal with the release of Vista (they were trying to avoid what happened when XP came out). Memory makers are lousy commodity managers in comparison to how those who produce gasoline, grain, metals, etc and really botched up--but MS also botched up and made the problem worse:
* Vista missed Christmas--it was in limited, corporate-and-developer-only release until January. Not only did this mean the vista launch couldn't take advantage of the shopping season, it also meant that the shopping season for computers itself was blunted as shoppers turned elsewhere for gift ideas (why buy a PC with crufty old XP when spiffy new Vista will be out and pre-installed on machines within weeks?). No demand there
* Though XP needs a relatively modest increase in resource requirements compared to its direct ancestor Windows 2000, the vast majority of the first XP adopters were moving from the DOS-based line of Windows (95/98/Me) and of all things what XP wanted the most over DOS-based Windows was RAM. DOS-based windows couldn't even properly use RAM over a certain level and most machines got to a certain level and stayed there because performance was maxed out. With XP, an old Win98 box could be make quite usable for a cheap price by simply plugging in more RAM. This fueled demand, which raised RAM prices.
* XP has been out for a VERY long time, and between all the service packs, updates and the demanding games and applications released in the past 5 years the demand for RAM has increased gradually even as the base OS is little unchanged. As Vista was released the minimum requirements were already met by most PCs up to a year old. This wasn't the case with XP, where so many crufty old PCs running Win98 were not up to the task of running XP.
* Vista is not different enough from XP to matter - turn off aero glass and to the casual user you have XP with a new UI theme--not much immediately useful comes right to mind. When XP came out it was targeted at legions of 98 and Me users, and 98 and Me were great stinking piles of crap compared to XP. Vista IS meaningfully better architecturally speaking but these advantages are only understood by computer scientists and software engineers. Furthermore, in the cutthroat market of PCs most new PCs are equipped with the featureless "home basic" edition, and that is what most users see, and that edition is well served by existing memory configs.
DRAM prices are like rollercoasters--they might have started at the top and will end up at the bottom, but all these external forces introduce "waves" that go up as well as d
the high levels of sodium and fat do not cause a "low level malaise" in any physical sense from a single meal
From personal experience I can tell you it only takes a single meal at McD's to cause negative effects. Ask a diabetic and they'll tell you that a single meal or snack most certainly DOES have a drastic effect on their blood sugar levels, so you can imagine how much work your pancreas and internal organs have to do to deal with such a meal when they DO work properly.
In fact any doctor or biologist would tell you that a single meal of greasy fries, burger and sugary drink most certainly WOULD have a very nearly immediate negative effect on ANY person who would consume it. The magnitude and exact nature of that effect varies however, especially in how it is perceived. Most normal people, even having not eaten fast food in a long time and not used to it, would at most feel lethargic after such a meal (the effects would be small and temporary). Some might get a headache or a stomach ache, or get constipated. A single fast food meal consumed by someone with allergies to the ingredients could cause severe illness or even death. In any case, the effect is present even with a single fast-food meal whether you perceive it or not.
You would have to eat multiple meals at McDonald's in the span of a day or two in order to cause any negative physical effects
As you mentioned, our diets are supposed to be "naturally varied". If you regularly ate at McD's for too long you'd be reducing that variation, and could be conditioning your body to such a diet--it would cause negative effects but the body would adjust in some way to live with those effects (including shifting the balance of your brain chemistry which alters perception and mood), but the effects are still there and can be cumulative.
Of course moderation is the key--it just seems that most people have lost site of moderation. The negative effects on your body from eating a single fast food meal are small and temporary but will accumulate if you do not give your body enough time to deal with them. Multiple meals is obviously excessive...however so is one meal a day. In fact, 3 meals PER WEEK is considered by many dieticians to be the point where the negative effects may start to accumulate, so if you eat more than 3 fast food meals in a week you are subjecting your body to ill effects of such food faster than your body can process them, and at that point your body starts to make adjustments to live with those effects and even though your cholesterol is elevated, your body fat is too high, blood sugars are out of whack, etc you still "feel fine" even as the ill effects continue to accumulate as they did before.
More stages of energy conversion = more waste.
.5 * .5 = .125). Thermal solar collectors can readily be made to match or exceed that and apparently it is achievable with these sound tubes and piezoelectric pickups. Though it is while off, this is definitely more than hype and does not rely on violating the laws of thermodynamics in order to be a viable method of electricity generation.
Well, where I live most electricity is generated as follows:
1. Energy stored in coal->heat energy through combustion
2. Heat energy->mechanical energy through use of steam to drive a turbine
3. mechanical energy->electrical energy through the use of a generator attached to the steam turbine
There is also natural gas, which simply takes the place of coal and uses the same number of energy conversions, and nuclear power, in which step one is simply changed to "energy stored in Uranium->heat energy through nuclear fission". Same number of conversions for all of that, except that step 1 is more efficient (less waste energy loss).
Now there is also "tree hugger power" - hydroelectric, wind and solar generation which may have fewer conversions, however the efficiency is lousy! You need huge, environment-destroying dams or you need to bulldoze thousands of acres of nature to put up windmills or solar cells. Why stop global warming if we have to destroy nature to do it, right?
Well, here we have a new solution:
1. stored energy -> heat through whatever process (combustion, fission, fuel cell, even waste heat from other processes)
2. heat -> sound with these new "prime movers"
3. sound -> electricity through piezoelectric effect
There are exactly the same number of steps/energy conversions as with the way we make power now, except now we have vastly more efficient replacements for the last two steps--something we haven't seriously had! The overall efficiency of such a a system is the product of the efficiencies of all the steps, so we could make great gains with such a process. This technique could be used to replace solar panels as well, because even though solar panels do direct conversion, they only convert 12 percent of the solar energy they capture into electricity. In order to match performance of traditional solar panels each step need only be 50 percent efficient (.5 *
The reason why you feel like crap when eating something unusual is because you've allowed that consumption to lax and your body has adjusted to that diet. It does not follow that eating at Wendy's occasionally makes people ill. It makes YOU ill because your body is no longer accustomed to it.
Actually by in large it isn't because you aren't used to the food--it is because you aren't used to feeling like crap. Much of the adjustment your body makes to a particular diet is actually mental perception. Yes, your body does make adjustments to sustained exposure to certain diets so it is better prepared to handle, for example, a diet of Big Macs, fries and pop. However, the result of that is basically a sustained low-level feeling of malaise. Since that "feeling like crap" state is of constant intensity (it doesn't come and go) your mental perception of your state of health is that it is normal.
When I was younger I was a great fan of McDonalds, then one day I got ill from what was probably an undercooked Quarter Pounder (the burgers never made me ill previously). I was put off from McD's for awhile (almost a year) then I tried it out again and "felt like crap". Since then (almost 15 years now) I've tried eating a burger at McD's on occasion and each and every time it makes me feel like crap. I'm sure that they aren't ALL mis-prepared so I'm guessing it is mostly mental perception--not being used to the effects of such food on my body and the memory of that one bad burger years ago.
Point is, you can't trust mental perception. Occasional consumption of McD's is NOT harmful to anyone (except perhaps those with severe allergies to any ingredients they use), but everyone's mental perception is different. You might "get used to it" but the body is still dealing with it.