I have visited a few other countries, and yes, I like America best. But let me tell you a story:
I was in a car wreck a few years ago. The road was icy, the road was curvy, and I was going about 20 miles an hour. The two right wheels popped the curb, and it was like a ride at Disneyland, following the curve. I stomped on the brakes, turned the wheel, all for naught. I had plenty of time to see the telephone pole approaching. In fact, I probably had time to get out of the car before I hit.
That's how I feel. People in power are making stupid decisions, and I have no control over it. I hate hypocrisy, and here we are supposedly the most free and best democracy in the world. Then we have the last presidential election, legalized bribes/campaign contributions, and now the DCMA and the deterioration of the patent system. I see that telephone pole coming, and it ain't a pretty sight. This time I will damn well get out of the car before I crash.
Screw microphones, use camera's! Damn this is scary. Sort of make me want to move to a more free country. We're still lagging behind China in the human rights violation game, but if we pull together and work hard we can catch up!
With a reaffirmed, unanimous decision from the appeals court MS stands a snowball's chance in hell of having the Supreme Court. Of course they know it, this is just a delaying tactic so the DOJ can't try to hold up the release of XP. Now that would be COOL!
One more reason to use Mozilla instead of MicroShaft Exploder. Flash was bad enough, now we've got this keyword crap. What's next, the browser just randomly jumps you to different advertiser's web sites? I liked the the web a hell of a lot better before it was invented/improved/innovated by Microsoft. Sure it wasn't as pretty, but it was faster and a lot more useful.
The more they screw with people the deeper a hole they dig for themselves. I applaud Miguel for the Mono project. Even if the project crashes and burns, ESPECIALLY if it is due to Microsoft being as nasty as usual, then that is just more ammunition in court. I say give them as much rope as they want to hang themselves with.
I find the irony here delicious. By being such a pompous ass, Microsoft has given rise to a tailor made competitor. If they start to play fair, they will lose. If they continue to break the law they will lose. It is only a matter of time.
Jeez, if you have to use Windows then run it on Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com). Here at work we use it for Quckbooks and the occasional Windows development that crops up.
They are getting a lot of mileage out of claiming they are using open standards, and this shows they were stretching the truth, as usual. So I believe they will either pull their ECMA submissions or else they will have to back down on this issue. Either way I think they are going to have a tough time putting a good spin on this, and all this is just more ammunition for the DOJ.
I think it should be obvious what the perfect legal remedy is for Microsoft. Just fine Microsoft 50 billion dollars and then the government can use that money to sue the motion picture and music cartels!
Microsoft will be have much less money for FUD/marketing for a year or so, and artists will be one step closer to being fairly compensated for thier work and having it available to whoever wants a taste.
One way I explain coding to some of my less technical friends is that I write recipes for computers. A pinch of array here, a cup of file access there, and presto: A digital address book! Just as there are many different recipies to bake a cake, there are many different ways to write a computer program. And that's where both engineering and art come into play.
I consider the anarchist's cookbook to be much more harmful than DeCSS. Is it being banned?
Slashdot stories about Microsoft always generate plenty of friendly debate, and this post has been no exception. Allow me to pipe in with my two cents worth. The reason why Microsoft must die is that it is now an unnecessary evil. Yes, Microsoft almost singlehandedly created the PC software market. But just as patents eventually expire to make way for innovation, Microsoft must expire to unlock the personal computer's full potential.
Microsoft has always been arrogant and monopolistic, but when carving out a new industry that attitude is necessary, as well as real innovation and providing a useful product. So in effect I believe Microsoft in the past has been a necessary evil. But now Microsoft is using it's monopoly to not empower it's users, but to squeeze every last penny they can out of them and to also constrain their option not by what is possible, but what is in Microsoft's best interest.
The argument that better commercial software not made by Microsoft will prevail is false because Microsoft is a monopoly. So until Microsoft is either dead or severely weakened, Microsoft will, for most PC users, generally determine how useful your computer is, and about how much you will pay for that usefulness.
So, in summary, the only way to unlock the full potential of personal computers is to weaken or kill Microsoft. That is a viable option now only because that Linux is becoming usable to the general public.
Betamax died because VHS was cheaper, so there was a better selection of videos even if they were of lesser quality. Your betamax example actually supports my point, since it would be much easier to distribute (and write, in my opinion) games for Indrema than for the Xbox.:-)
For some of you that have obviously missed it. The plan never was to compete head to head with the larger console makers in the beginning. Taking a page from the Open Source playbook, the idea was to *stay afloat* for a few months or years whilst continually improving the product. Sure, the idea is to make a lot of money, but *NOT* to make a lot of money and sell a lot of units immediately.
After a while, when a product is available that is better than anything on the market, has more content than the larger console can ever hope to provide, and costs a fraction of the cost of comparable consoles/services, *THEN* Indrema would take off and beat the major consoles into submission.
Also, if Indrema is ever successful then it will provide exactly what I think Linux now lacks before large game developers will write games for Linux: A single, standard platform to write for. If they are sold, it will cost approximately $500 to buld an Indrema console. If you want to support Linux, do what I plan on doing if given a chance: But an Indrema console at any price.
I've been following the mail list on http://handhelds.org for a while now, and I plan on buying an iPaq as soon as I can. It seems to me that the basic problem is not that there aren't a lack of applications (everyday it seems somebody reports that they have compiled and are running some standard Linux application on thier iPaq, like QuakeForge for instance) but rather most people are waiting for a stable base distribution for the iPaq before packages are prepared and released for the general public.
Although anybody can and does compile and run pretty much anything they want to on thier iPaq, in an effort to not reinvent the wheel the major developers on handhelds.org have settled on distribution called Familiar. Since there are constant major improvements (deep sleep and a flashdisk journalling fs, for example) everybody seems to be just waiting until Familiar gets stable, and I get the impression that as soon as that happens then all the regular users will immediately jump in with prepared application packages.
Also, the open PIM software from http://www.agendacomputing.com is becoming the quasistandard PIM package on the iPaq.
One alternative to VMWARE is Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com). It is cheaper and faster than VMWare, but it does have two major disadvantages. No DirectX and currently the only networking supported is TCP/IP. But if all you want to do is run Windoze applications it totally blows VMWare away. There's even a trick to be able to talk to Exchange servers, but it's a pain.
I recently bought several Win95 OEM licenses, because for some things (games, syncing my PDA, and Win4Lin) Linux simply isn't there yet, for twelve bucks a pop. Windows 95 is smaller, faster, simpler, and doesn't have that irritating Windows Update "feature." Win95 does come with USB support, but for some inexplicable reason M$ includes it as a seperate install on the CD. My main machine is an AMD, and I think the M$ install is the only thing that requires OSR2, and I do find it funny that you have to run Windoze to run a patch to get Windoze running. I ended up runnning the patch on a nonAMD computer, and then copying the files over with a floppy.
This sounds like an expensive knock off of the Indrema. The Indrema has more features and will cost less, but then it doesn't exactly have the brand name that Nokia has. I wonder what the possibility of Nokia licensing Indrema technology would be? Check out http://www.indrema.com for details.
I just did this a few weeks ago: ripped out the guts of an arcade game and put in a real computer inside. I was lucky enough to find a local company that repairs arcade games, so I got all of my hardware and advice from him. Pretty much the only thing I kept were the controls and the case. I don't know what is is about hearing that quarter fall into the bucket, and then opening the door and getting it out again, but it sure does give me a warm fuzzy. I currently have it hooked up to a regular television, and I'm less than pleased with that. As soon as I find a cheap 19 inch monitor I'm replacing it.
I think a lot of folks are missing the point. As much as most of us (especially me) would like to see Indrema make a big splash on the market and sell Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft under the table, that's just a pleasant pipe dream. All we have to hope for is for Indrema to be profitable long enough to change the rules. We all know open software is inherently better, except that it takes a while. So I predict that the Indrema will be launched next year and have modest initial success, but create a cult following of developers, and in two years when there are plenty of high quality Indrema games available for a fraction of the cost of other consoles, THEN Indrema will sell other consoles under the table.
So, keep the faith as always. All Indrema has to do is survive for a couple years. Once there is some serious, fully armed OSS competition in a market, we have seen that the standard business model can't compete.
James Bearden
http://james.bearden.com
P.S. If Microsoft is like the Borg, then OSS is like species 85917 (or whatever): The weak shall perish.
Everybody argues how innovative Microsoft is in general, and who invented the Start button. The funny thing that Geoworks did a couple decades ago. Does anybody remember a revolutionary OS called GEOS? It was Windows 95 when Windows was text based, and it ran on a 286! An Geoworks stole a lot of thier ideas from Macintosh, and Macintosh stole a lot of thier ideas from the Xerox Palo Alto REsearch Center, who had no idea what they owned.
James B.
I hear you, brother. I worked for five years developing and mantaining a integrated network/customer support system that was the result of decades of experience and supported thousands of nodes and customers. Then my company got bought, and we were told it was going to be replaced in less than six months. I took one look at the beta four months later, after being shut out of the spec, design, and development loop, and decided I didn't want to be in the STATE when they tried to push it down the user's throats. Politely put, the new system would increase the workload tremendously and customer support would suffer. I now work for a tiny firm running no Micro$oft software, and life is good again.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally Microsoft is getting the right kind of PR! I can't wait to see how Microsoft gets out of this one unscathed.
I have visited a few other countries, and yes, I like America best. But let me tell you a story:
I was in a car wreck a few years ago. The road was icy, the road was curvy, and I was going about 20 miles an hour. The two right wheels popped the curb, and it was like a ride at Disneyland, following the curve. I stomped on the brakes, turned the wheel, all for naught. I had plenty of time to see the telephone pole approaching. In fact, I probably had time to get out of the car before I hit.
That's how I feel. People in power are making stupid decisions, and I have no control over it. I hate hypocrisy, and here we are supposedly the most free and best democracy in the world. Then we have the last presidential election, legalized bribes/campaign contributions, and now the DCMA and the deterioration of the patent system. I see that telephone pole coming, and it ain't a pretty sight. This time I will damn well get out of the car before I crash.
Damn I wish I had some moderator points to through at this. Ahmen!
Screw microphones, use camera's! Damn this is scary. Sort of make me want to move to a more free country. We're still lagging behind China in the human rights violation game, but if we pull together and work hard we can catch up!
With a reaffirmed, unanimous decision from the appeals court MS stands a snowball's chance in hell of having the Supreme Court. Of course they know it, this is just a delaying tactic so the DOJ can't try to hold up the release of XP. Now that would be COOL!
One more reason to use Mozilla instead of MicroShaft Exploder. Flash was bad enough, now we've got this keyword crap. What's next, the browser just randomly jumps you to different advertiser's web sites? I liked the the web a hell of a lot better before it was invented/improved/innovated by Microsoft. Sure it wasn't as pretty, but it was faster and a lot more useful.
The more they screw with people the deeper a hole they dig for themselves. I applaud Miguel for the Mono project. Even if the project crashes and burns, ESPECIALLY if it is due to Microsoft being as nasty as usual, then that is just more ammunition in court. I say give them as much rope as they want to hang themselves with.
I find the irony here delicious. By being such a pompous ass, Microsoft has given rise to a tailor made competitor. If they start to play fair, they will lose. If they continue to break the law they will lose. It is only a matter of time.
Jeez, if you have to use Windows then run it on Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com). Here at work we use it for Quckbooks and the occasional Windows development that crops up.
http://james.nontrivial.org/projvdr.htm
They are getting a lot of mileage out of claiming they are using open standards, and this shows they were stretching the truth, as usual. So I believe they will either pull their ECMA submissions or else they will have to back down on this issue. Either way I think they are going to have a tough time putting a good spin on this, and all this is just more ammunition for the DOJ.
James
I think it should be obvious what the perfect legal remedy is for Microsoft. Just fine Microsoft 50 billion dollars and then the government can use that money to sue the motion picture and music cartels!
Microsoft will be have much less money for FUD/marketing for a year or so, and artists will be one step closer to being fairly compensated for thier work and having it available to whoever wants a taste.
James
One way I explain coding to some of my less technical friends is that I write recipes for computers. A pinch of array here, a cup of file access there, and presto: A digital address book! Just as there are many different recipies to bake a cake, there are many different ways to write a computer program. And that's where both engineering and art come into play.
I consider the anarchist's cookbook to be much more harmful than DeCSS. Is it being banned?
Hello Folks,
Slashdot stories about Microsoft always generate plenty of friendly debate, and this post has been no exception. Allow me to pipe in with my two cents worth. The reason why Microsoft must die is that it is now an unnecessary evil. Yes, Microsoft almost singlehandedly created the PC software market. But just as patents eventually expire to make way for innovation, Microsoft must expire to unlock the personal computer's full potential.
Microsoft has always been arrogant and monopolistic, but when carving out a new industry that attitude is necessary, as well as real innovation and providing a useful product. So in effect I believe Microsoft in the past has been a necessary evil. But now Microsoft is using it's monopoly to not empower it's users, but to squeeze every last penny they can out of them and to also constrain their option not by what is possible, but what is in Microsoft's best interest.
The argument that better commercial software not made by Microsoft will prevail is false because Microsoft is a monopoly. So until Microsoft is either dead or severely weakened, Microsoft will, for most PC users, generally determine how useful your computer is, and about how much you will pay for that usefulness.
So, in summary, the only way to unlock the full potential of personal computers is to weaken or kill Microsoft. That is a viable option now only because that Linux is becoming usable to the general public.
James Bearden
Betamax died because VHS was cheaper, so there was a better selection of videos even if they were of lesser quality. Your betamax example actually supports my point, since it would be much easier to distribute (and write, in my opinion) games for Indrema than for the Xbox. :-)
For some of you that have obviously missed it. The plan never was to compete head to head with the larger console makers in the beginning. Taking a page from the Open Source playbook, the idea was to *stay afloat* for a few months or years whilst continually improving the product. Sure, the idea is to make a lot of money, but *NOT* to make a lot of money and sell a lot of units immediately.
After a while, when a product is available that is better than anything on the market, has more content than the larger console can ever hope to provide, and costs a fraction of the cost of comparable consoles/services, *THEN* Indrema would take off and beat the major consoles into submission.
Also, if Indrema is ever successful then it will provide exactly what I think Linux now lacks before large game developers will write games for Linux: A single, standard platform to write for. If they are sold, it will cost approximately $500 to buld an Indrema console. If you want to support Linux, do what I plan on doing if given a chance: But an Indrema console at any price.
Too bad nobody seems to have caught the reference. That's frigging hilarious!
I've been following the mail list on http://handhelds.org for a while now, and I plan on buying an iPaq as soon as I can. It seems to me that the basic problem is not that there aren't a lack of applications (everyday it seems somebody reports that they have compiled and are running some standard Linux application on thier iPaq, like QuakeForge for instance) but rather most people are waiting for a stable base distribution for the iPaq before packages are prepared and released for the general public.
Although anybody can and does compile and run pretty much anything they want to on thier iPaq, in an effort to not reinvent the wheel the major developers on handhelds.org have settled on distribution called Familiar. Since there are constant major improvements (deep sleep and a flashdisk journalling fs, for example) everybody seems to be just waiting until Familiar gets stable, and I get the impression that as soon as that happens then all the regular users will immediately jump in with prepared application packages.
Also, the open PIM software from http://www.agendacomputing.com is becoming the quasistandard PIM package on the iPaq.
James
One alternative to VMWARE is Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com). It is cheaper and faster than VMWare, but it does have two major disadvantages. No DirectX and currently the only networking supported is TCP/IP. But if all you want to do is run Windoze applications it totally blows VMWare away. There's even a trick to be able to talk to Exchange servers, but it's a pain.
I recently bought several Win95 OEM licenses, because for some things (games, syncing my PDA, and Win4Lin) Linux simply isn't there yet, for twelve bucks a pop. Windows 95 is smaller, faster, simpler, and doesn't have that irritating Windows Update "feature." Win95 does come with USB support, but for some inexplicable reason M$ includes it as a seperate install on the CD. My main machine is an AMD, and I think the M$ install is the only thing that requires OSR2, and I do find it funny that you have to run Windoze to run a patch to get Windoze running. I ended up runnning the patch on a nonAMD computer, and then copying the files over with a floppy.
This sounds like an expensive knock off of the Indrema. The Indrema has more features and will cost less, but then it doesn't exactly have the brand name that Nokia has. I wonder what the possibility of Nokia licensing Indrema technology would be? Check out http://www.indrema.com for details.
Hello All,
I just did this a few weeks ago: ripped out the guts of an arcade game and put in a real computer inside. I was lucky enough to find a local company that repairs arcade games, so I got all of my hardware and advice from him. Pretty much the only thing I kept were the controls and the case. I don't know what is is about hearing that quarter fall into the bucket, and then opening the door and getting it out again, but it sure does give me a warm fuzzy. I currently have it hooked up to a regular television, and I'm less than pleased with that. As soon as I find a cheap 19 inch monitor I'm replacing it.
James
I think a lot of folks are missing the point. As much as most of us (especially me) would like to see Indrema make a big splash on the market and sell Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft under the table, that's just a pleasant pipe dream. All we have to hope for is for Indrema to be profitable long enough to change the rules. We all know open software is inherently better, except that it takes a while. So I predict that the Indrema will be launched next year and have modest initial success, but create a cult following of developers, and in two years when there are plenty of high quality Indrema games available for a fraction of the cost of other consoles, THEN Indrema will sell other consoles under the table. So, keep the faith as always. All Indrema has to do is survive for a couple years. Once there is some serious, fully armed OSS competition in a market, we have seen that the standard business model can't compete. James Bearden http://james.bearden.com P.S. If Microsoft is like the Borg, then OSS is like species 85917 (or whatever): The weak shall perish.
Everybody argues how innovative Microsoft is in general, and who invented the Start button. The funny thing that Geoworks did a couple decades ago. Does anybody remember a revolutionary OS called GEOS? It was Windows 95 when Windows was text based, and it ran on a 286! An Geoworks stole a lot of thier ideas from Macintosh, and Macintosh stole a lot of thier ideas from the Xerox Palo Alto REsearch Center, who had no idea what they owned. James B.
Currently Win4Lin doesn't support WinME, but of course they are working on it.
I hear you, brother. I worked for five years developing and mantaining a integrated network/customer support system that was the result of decades of experience and supported thousands of nodes and customers. Then my company got bought, and we were told it was going to be replaced in less than six months. I took one look at the beta four months later, after being shut out of the spec, design, and development loop, and decided I didn't want to be in the STATE when they tried to push it down the user's throats. Politely put, the new system would increase the workload tremendously and customer support would suffer. I now work for a tiny firm running no Micro$oft software, and life is good again.