Yes it is old, and yes, "Millenium" is a "previous" project. If you go to the directory above the Millenium one (http://research.microsoft.com/research/sn/), you find the systems and networks section. Among other interesting stuff, it has this to say:
---
Millennium: The MSR Millennium Project was an effort to build self-organizing, self-tuning distributed systems providing high-level abstractions to programmers. Millennium actually consisted of a number of prototypes including Borg, a distributed Java VM; Coign, a system for producing client-server applications from non-distributed COM programs; Continuum, a distributed COM 2.0 runtime; and Millennium Falcon, a DCOM implementation for gigabit networks.
---
(And yes, your eyes do not deceive you. There was supposed to be a Java VM named "Borg".)
One of the reasons a company might discontinue a research project is that the project has moved from research to implementation. Such a move may be accompanied by a name change. Due to Sun's legal victory, Microsoft will be basing their new system on C# instead of Java. But the intent of the original project remains the same.
The Millenium monster stands revealed!
It is.Net!
Millenium (a thousand year kingdom) is its destiny!
One problem with all devouring monsters that want to rule the world: they bite off more than they can chew. That tends to give them a case of nuclear heartburn so bad they blow to kingdom come. (At least it did in "Godzilla 2000 Millenium".) Destiny or not, Microsoft simply can't begin to handle such a scenario. Code Red and its brethern are ample proof of that.
> The record is clear on one thing: no
> operating system has ever come back from > the grave. [...]
>Now is the end time for *BSD.
How about Mac OS? Apple nearly died in 1996. It was far worse off than you think *BSD is now. Only a miracle could save it. The miracle happened on December 14, 1996, when the Mac-loving kaiju goddess Mothra Leo resurrected Hokkaido's scorched forests, along with a lone apple tree. The poor thing was just a sappling, all burned and blackened. She turned it into a mighty tree, ringed with flowers. Days later, Apple announced the surprise return of Steve Jobs, who turned the company around. The next year, Mothra's little friend Fairy perched on an Apple Performa. The heroic, wonder working goddess assumed the form of Aqua Mothra, shooting little OS X logos at her foes. Apple's fortunes immediately rose, and the company turned from near death to miraculous recovery over the next few years. In the current hard times, it is Apple that is among the strongest of the desktop computer makers. OS X is Mac OS reborn as a form of BSD, the desktop's last hope against the coming darkness of XP.
With the early, almost miraculous successes of OS X, the new release of FreeBSD, and OS X.1 due out any day now, there can be no doubt that *BSD's future is bright indeed. Apple is going to take BSD where it has never been before: the consumer desktop, the schools, etc. Apple plans to have all of its systems in the schools converted to OS X/BSD within a year (and it has more computers in the schools than Dell or Compaq). OS X has been favorably compared to Windows XP by the media (then again, anything would be better than XP). With it, Apple hopes to regain a good chunk of their ancient market share.
"Mothra isn't dying. This is just the end of her larval stage."
Cosmos, "Godzilla vs. Mothra"
(This was posted by a computer running OS X, purchased March 24, 2001.)
> Symptoms of oppression: [...]
> Symptoms of possession: [...]
Huh?!? Are you by chance responding to the cute little mascot of BSD? Yes, I know he looks like a pop culture representation of a Christian demon. In reality, he is a daemon. "Daemon" is from the Greek, and refers to a type of spirit responsible for some aspect of nature (keeping planets from colliding, helping plants grow, that sort of thing). There is no implication in the word that the being is good or evil.
The UNIX world has adopted that idea in the form of programs called "daemons" that take care of tasks behind the scenes. When you've accessed Slashdot, your browser has been talking to a daemon: the Apache web server. It has been fetching pages for you and allowing you to post on this message board.
By making a daemon their mascot, the BSD folks are honoring those tireless programs, without which, UNIX itself would be impossible (or at least more difficult).
An AC wrote:
> The results are all wrong! Objective-C is
> taking over when millions adopt Mac OS X!
Your joke at Objective-C's expense was funny (I never realized how bad it was). But I don't think that is the language that will take over. Remember, Cocoa apps can be written in both Objective-C and Java. Furthermore, OS X has the best Java 2 implementation on the desktop, and Swing apps also have the Aqua GUI. The Developers CD in the OS X box even has a compiler to turn Java aps into clickable Mac apps. OS X is only going to make Java stronger and more popular. Already, OS X is benefiting from the ability to run Java apps that can be downloaded from the web. That's how I'm controlling my Airport in OS X.
Microsoft really shot themselves in the foot when they took Java out of Windows XP. The applications go where the developers go, and the systems where the applications are are the ones that win. Right now, the best systems to run Java on are OS X and Linux. Windows XP looses before it is even born.
"Mothra's attack is working."
Shouta, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Oh, goody, King Ghidora's getting another Leonid event to herald his December return to the silver screen in "Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Daikaiju Soukougeki" (see the director's site at http://www.shusuke-kaneko.com/eng/gmk01.html for details). The 1998 fireballs (which I got to see) occured less than a month before "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks" was released in Japan. And of course, the 1966 storm occured in the midst of Ghidora's career in the 60's. It seems Toho got their Leonid predictions down to an exact science long before scientists did.;)
For anyone who doesn't know, King Ghidora is a gigantic, golden, 3 headed, two legged dragon that is the leader of a race of planet destroying monsters. He comes to the Earth in asteroid form, in order to destroy it. He is credited with destroying all life on Venus (Mars in the American version of the 1964 "Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster"), and attempting to destroy the dinosaurs 130 million years ago (when he was stopped by a time traveling Mothra Leo). His younger four-legged volcanic brother Death Ghidora wiped out Mars, and drove the dinosaurs to extiction 65 million years ago. The Ghidorans are the ancient enemies of Mothra. King Ghidora and Godzilla have been fighting ever since an infant Mothra asked for his help in "Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster".
Nobody much likes the RIAA or the big five anymore. Not the exploited artists, not the ripped off consumers, and especially not Slashdotters. Heck, we don't even *need* them anymore. So let the DoJ and EU grill them for a few years. Good for them! While the big five are busy defending themselves, as with Microsoft, we will be free to work on replacing them.
Some ideas: recording is no longer an esoteric thing that you need a rich multinational company to provide. Last I heard, all you need is a Mac, about $800, a soundproofed corner of your basement, and some sound skills. That puts recording in the range of a home business, which could provide affordable recording services to local bands (at least some of which are probably as or more talented than what shows up on CDs today). If the recording person either has web skills themselves or can partner with a local web design firm, that would make it very convenient for the bands to not only get their songs recorded, but to get them online. There are existing ecommerce services for shareware that could easily adapt themselves for selling music (a download is a download) and again would make the pricing reasonable. By providing lower prices and more reasonable terms (no time limits, ability to burn onto CD for personal use, etc.), this fledgeling recording industry could easily come to outsell the RIAA sites and eventually replace them. This would be a much better deal for artists and consumers alike.
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
> Since the government's request was also denied,
> this is a victory for MS. As a result, there
> won't be an injunction against the release of
> Windows XP in October.
Since the case is going to be remanded on August 12, it isn't that long of a delay for MS. If the DOJ's lawyers have half a brain between them, they'll no doubt be presenting a request for some sort of XP injuction, especially since EPIC typed up that nice 20 page complaint to the FTC, detailing in depth (and legalese) just what is wrong with XP. The antitrust case is not our only hope in stopping XP. We still have the FTC, the US Senate, and the EU (who have their own antitrust issues with MS). The US antitrust rulings also make MS a big, bright target for lawsuits. MS also has several very large and angry corporations (capable of throwing lobbists, lawyers, and campain contributions about) that are getting more angry at MS by the day. MS might be able to take most of them individually, but can they really fight against AOL/Time Warner, Kodak, AT&T, etc., all at the same time they are trying to fight several governments for their continued existance? Add to all that the continuing embarassment of Code Red (a worm attacking MS web servers that has the US government rather alarmed), and Sircam (a nasty Outlook worm), and the fear and anger MS is stiring up in their customers by their latest anti-piracy witchhunt/marketing ploy, and you have the PR blunder of the century!
Even if all the above can't stop the release of XP, there is still hope. Back in 1996, Linux was still pretty much a free OS found in the backs of computer books, and Apple was nearly dead, ashes and blacked stumps all that was left of a once mighty tree. Now Linux commands 27% of the new server market, powerful enough that it can counter MS with the help of its fellow versions of Unix. Apple is back, better than ever, with a beautiful and powerful infant OS X that in its first two months managed to outsell Windows 2000 upgrade and earn a place for itself in the top 10 selling business software packages in March and April. Its applications are on the way, and in September, its faster, more polished version 10.1 will be out. If and when XP is released, it *will* have real competition! MS is so busy scheming, fighting off legal action, breaking into new markets, terrorizing its customers, etc., that it doesn't see the danger its precious desktop monopoly is in.
BTW, one of the groups that are going to be hurt by XP (regardless of whether it comes out or not) is the PC makers. You guys are counting on XP to come and save you, but it is not likely to be well received. You need an alternative desktop OS, and you need it quick. Much as I love Apple, if OS X isn't ported to x86, it isn't going to be much help to you. Get together and make a cute little alliance (as in "save our jobs", not "nice PR photo shoot"). Work with the Linux, KDE, and Gnome people to develop one commercial grade, easy to use, desktop GUI. Go en masse to the commercial PC software developers (except for MS) and sit on them until they port their apps. Appoint a body to oversee continued development, and plop the results on your respective PC's (with extra goodies and whatever icons you care to negotiate for) and sell them. Compete based on added value (without breaking the ability to run programs), but nicely cooperate with the development of the common OS. Short of OS X on x86 PC's or MS coming to their senses, I think it is probably the only way you are going to be able to make a PC that actually (gasp) sells.
"The only thing we have to worry about is to slay King Ghidora."
Shouta, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
> I think you forgot that Java runs on Linux, if it
> doesn't run on Windows.. nobody will use it,
> and instead will use something that doesn't
> run on Linux.
Java isn't going away. It is used a lot in the enterprise sector for distributed computing. The Fortune 500 would not have any trouble making sure all their desktops run a JVM even if MS doesn't put one there. The reason MS is doing this (the lawsuit is a convenient excuse) is that Java competes with.Net and they have no reason to support something that endangers the thing they are basing their future on. Fortunately, this comes right after they let their OEMs remove their browser. This is in fact a golden opportunity for an alternate browser with good Java support to step in and get themselves installed on XP boxes instead of IE. MS isn't going to hurt Java much, but they are going to hurt their browser.
> Sad really that the linux community just
> prays microsoft won't do something evil, and
> they just do anyway.
Boy is that an exercise in futility. MS is evil, greedy and cruel as a ravenous dragon. Don't feed the dragon!
> Someone has to put their foot down and
> stop microsoft.. but how do you stop a 400lb
> Gorilla?
Easy, with a giant moth goddess with a 800 foot wing span and her good buddy Godzilla. Both hate Microsoft, and both love Apple ("Mothra 2", "Godzilla 2000") and Java and open source by extension (because of OS X).
Come on, Tok Wira,
These sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra,
We need you today!
> > Yes it is. If you have a jvm that follows
> > spec, and you have java code that follows
> > spec, you have WORA.
> You're wrong. Start multi-platform
> programming in Java instead of reading
> articles about it and you'll very quickly
> understand.
Of course you can have WORA, all it takes is 1) a portable language like Java, 2) careful attention to writing portable code (no MS J++ please!), 3) good support for that language on all target platforms. I've worked on a large project in C that would compile on multiple platforms from the same source.
As portable as C is, Java is far better. For example, I've downloaded a number of Java applications to run on my iBook. The thing is, the operating system, OS X, didn't exist when they were written, yet they still run fine.
All the exact things that Microsoft is doing that I hate are far too numerous to name (they've been real busy being bad lately). But here are some of the general reasons:
Their cruelty: Yes, their products are among the worst around. In fact, since they do the OS, and a lot of the problems with other software can be traced back to the OS, they bear some responsiblity for those too. I have to use their stupid products at work, and they make the frustration level of my job ten times worse. Let's not even get into the 11 months I spent trying to get Win95 to work before going back to 3.1. It is cruel to treat customers like this, but you know what? MS doesn't CARE about their customers, except to hit them for more money.
Their predatory behaviour: business competition is not supposed to be a blood sport, but just try to tell MS that. It has devoured company after company. Now if these other companies went out of business because MS had a better product, that would be one thing. They don't bother with that. MS makes mediocre products (at best), then uses underhanded tricks and illegal leveraging of its monopoly to crush the competition.
They are way out of control: Read the news. They want to totally control the internet. They want to make you pay to keep your software running. They want to force you to give them all your information, which they will store in a convenient place for crackers to attack. They are using anti-piracy witch hunts (audits) to torture medium sized businesses into accepting a subscription plan as cheaper (note, these are randomly selected companies who may have done nothing wrong, not ones that a disgruntled employee has ratted on). And it goes on and on and on.
MS is making a fatal mistake now. They are making their *customers* hate them. And it is those customers, not the DOJ, who stand to hurt MS the worst. The courts may not order a breakup, but every unhappy customer that wanders off, shaves a little sliver off the MS block.
Come on, Tok Wira,
These sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra,
We need you today!
> What I personally like is the guy who was
> installing Office so that people could read
> Word documents. I guess he never heard of
> the freely available Word Viewer program
> which is available on Microsoft's website.
Is it available for the Mac? Because that is what he was running on if he was using Apple Works. Apple seems to be paying attention to the problem, as the latest version of Apple Works now reads and writes Word and Excel files.
> The problem is that many people WILL pay
> for content.. Majority rules in most
> circumstances and in most, like this one,
> the people who are willing to stand up and
> have their voice heard are the minority.
Huh?!? We are talking about actual people here, right? The types that want free breakfast, free lunch, free dinner, and lots of free beer? In the case of the US, the genetic and moral decendants of those who risked imprisonment to chuck tea overboard because they didn't want to pay tax on it? Uh, huh. And only the minority of these very same people will have the guts to demand that their content be free as well? Okay. So why isn't the price of bread in the millions?
And yes, I remember the days of the BBS. I also had internet access back then, one of the lucky few. The internet had no Web back then, but it still managed to have email, newsgroups, ftp sites, and talk (the old Unix app that would later be replaced by chatting and instant messaging). The local BBS had some files to download, the odd forum, and not much else. If you wanted more, there were the online services: Compuserve and its clones, but you paid and paid and still didn't get what you get today for a whole lot less. Also remember, the online services and early ISPs charged hourly and got very expensive. The introduction of a flat monthly rate was a big boon to the internet's growth.
Copy protection has been done before, and was overturned by market pressure. Charging people by what they've seen and how long they viewed it has been done too, and also overturned by market pressure. People don't want to be told what they can do with what they've bought, they don't want to pay more than what's reasonable, they will pay more only to get more, and they don't like surprises on their bills every month. Get a clue!
>> People won't pay for content because
>> they're already paying for access - why pay
>> twice?
> Because the access provider and the
> content provider are different. Lots of people
> pay for both cable tv (access) and pay-per-
> view (content).
Cable TV is both access and content (channels). Both cable tv and pay-per-view are usually paid to the same company on the same bill. To the customer's mind, it is all the same thing: "cable bill".
Do you have any idea what simple access can cost people? I'm not talking T1 or even DSL (we'll get that when the sun freezes over) here, I'm talking simple dial up access. I live in a semi-rural area, some 30 miles from the nearest big city. My ISP just raised its rates to $22. I have to pay over $30 just to be able to call up my access number for "free". That's over $50 for a crappy dial up connection, and that's not even counting the second phone line so the goodies on my main phone line don't foul up my internet access! Now you expect me and the rest of rural America to pony up for the web sites we visit? Somehow, I think a subscription to a few choice magazines and the stamps on a few envelopes to request mail-order catalogs from one's favorite venders would be cheaper by far and accomplish much of what one would use the web for.
Besides, why pay for what has already been paid for?!? Fan sites either run on free servers, or are paid for by the fans who run and love them. The fun they get from the site is their reward (I know, I've done fan sites myself). Corporate sites use content to lure eyeballs to their sites. Getting people to see their products and advertisements pays for the content. Magazines and other publishers mostly use content from their publications that has already been paid for by their advertisers and subscribers. They then get additional revenues for online advertising.
For the most part, this isn't about poor content providers looking to pay hosting fees. If it was about someone in trouble, and I did frequently enjoy their site and believe in it, I'd help out. No, this is about greed. This topic, DMCA, MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft: it all comes down to greed and how much all these exploiters think they can milk their poor customers for, over and over. Leave the sharks to their feeding frenzy, and just walk away. XP, Passport, Hailstorm,.Net: they can have it. Let them choke on it!
Come on, Tok Wira,
These sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra,
We need you today!
Three weeks till Mothra's 40th birthday!
("tok wira" is Malay from "Mothra's Song",
roughly translated: "heroic wonder-working deity".)
> So your saying that MS has compition in the
> OS market? But I thought they were an
> monopoly with no compition in the OS
> market? At least that is what 8 judges have
> said.
One doesn't have to have exactly 100% of the market to have a monopoly. Having a monopoly is not necessarily illegal. Microsoft's problem is that it has 92% of the desktop OS market, an over inflated ego, and a nasty tendency to bully everybody in sight. This has resulted in them doing a number of low down, dirty, and illegal things to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors.
As I said, MS has 92% of the desktop market. Apple has 5%, Linux less than 2%, and various others make up the rest. Though that may seem rosy for MS, there's trouble brewing.;) Upgrades of MS's older OS, Windows 98, are currently outselling (by a widening margin) MS's current OS, Windows ME. This has been going on for a couple of months now, and is probably due to people finally realizing that ME is a whiny brat and a piece of junk to boot (hey, it only took my barely computer literate boss a day to figure that one out). PC sales are in a slump. MS is introducing Windows XP at the end of October, but it is going to be something of a nightmare. For instance, I can just see the reaction of a thousand Windows newbies to having their desktop files automatically go away somewhere. On the other hand, Apple's new Unix based OS, called OS X, is beautiful, powerful, and friendly. In its first two months, the OS X upgrades OUTSOLD the Windows 2000 upgrades -- a real trick considering there are so many fewer Macs than PCs!!! In 2002, all of Apple's deals with MS expire. Then Apple is really going to come out fighting.
Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in the server market, just a 41% share. Linux has 27%, the other versions of Unix 13% (total Unix is 40%), 19% for the rest. Linux is MS's biggest threat right now, and has the greatest ability to block.NET, as long as Linux developers aren't silly enough to actually enable it by building a Linux port. Guys, lets face it..NET is not MS's strategy for everybody's future, it is their strategy for THEIR future. That is their future profit, their future market dominance. If an open source port is made, MS will either profit from it, or haul the evil viral programmers into court for IP violations under the DMCA. Even if you could implement all the open parts without difficulty, Hailstorm and Passport are going to be used for the authentication, and they are firmly under MS control. Just look at the test case in the UK, and what the problems and their causes were there. If you want to do something, make existing alternative open source enterprise networking tools more robust, and better able to work with IBM and Sun's offerings.
MS has managed to make a lot of users very angry, and their work lives very frustrating. People I've talked to are distrustful to downright scared of Hailstorm, and pretty much ridicule the idea of downloading bits of an application for a monthly fee. Oh, MS will find a bunch of sheep to follow them no matter what they do. But there are many people, more than ever before, who are looking for an alternative. Provide them with good ones, and MS is going to loose some marketshare. If the courts won't split them up, their own customers will whittle them down.
"Mothra, come quickly!"
Lola, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
To the AC that posted "If Adobe Doesn't Straighten Up Their Act": Your post is very amusing, but your logic is a little shakey in two areas:
1) We don't know if Adobe is even behind this. The law firm won't even say whether they are working for Adobe. It may be that Adobe is going "KIllustrator, what's that?" while some German law firm is trying to scare some money for itself from some poor person at a university. The insistence on paying up rather than removing the infringing name, and the requirement to name all users seems fishy to me.
2) Since when is Adobe going to care about you burning "pirated" copies of their software? As far as they are concerned, you are not a customer to begin with.
To Adobe: If you are behind this, don't you have better things to do? Like finish your OS X ports before your competitors so you don't loose your precious marketshare? I have valid licenses for both the Windows and the Mac versions of Photoshop. I'm only upgrading to Carbon or Cocoa.
Since a similar fungus has now been found on earth, I think it is far more likely that the MIR fungus is from earth, not space. Once carried to the station from earth by accident, the fungus found the place, with an abundant supply of yummy metal, very much to its liking and propagated like a tribble. That should teach us to watch what we bring into space vehicles and stations with us. After all, once up there, there is no way to stop at Walmart for some pest control products.;)
As for CD's, just take the same precautions that you would take with anything you want to archive and keep for a while. Keep them in a dry, cool, dark place, away from humidity, acids and other corrosive chemicals.
I am very glad to see this. That it is a 30 minute audio file is not the point. It represents a real chance for the good Doctor to come back. Watch it, support it, and let the BBC know that you support it, and if enough people do that, he may indeed come back, to TV, where he belongs.
The one quibble I had was with the following statement:
> Doctor Who is the longest running science-
> fiction series in the world.
Sorry, Doctor Who is the longest running science fiction *TV* series in the world. Godzilla probably holds the movies series record, beating out Doctor Who by nine years. His first movie was in 1954. His most recent movie in American theaters was August 2000. His most recent movie in Japan was December 2000. His next movie in Japan (alongside Mothra, King Ghidora, and Baragon) is this December. Heck, even Mothra first appeared in 1961, two years before Doctor Who. The old girl is celebrating her 40th birthday this July. Actually, Mothra and the Doctor would get along fine. Both are big on protecting the Earth from evil space monsters.
Microsoft is running a new PR campaign. It consists of articles appearing all over, complete with pics of a smug, smiling Gates. Investors are supposed to come away thinking their money is safe in a strong, secure Microsoft. Enemies are supposed to tremble in fear of the indestructable juggernaut. The masses are supposed to see MS as their only choice -- for everything. And Slashdot, YOU FELL FOR IT!
The only area in which MS has a true monopoly is on the desktop. MS is so smug in that area that they are planning to put out an ugly OS upgrade full of features that people would pay to not have. The strongest alternative is Apple's new OS X, still drying its wings while waiting for all the drivers and apps to be finished (but just look at those spiffy new wing blades!;). Expect some bloody chunks of the "Great Devil's" market share to come fluttering down next year.;)
.Net is a server strategy. MS holds 41% of the server OS market share. All the versions of UNIX (lead by Linux at 27%) add up to 40%. One percent difference does not a monopoly make. Apache holds 60% of the web server market. Given that, I'd say that UNIX and Open Source rule the web.
.Net has other problems. It will be ready in 2 or 3 years. J2EE is here today. In fact the nice folks from Apache have an open source J2EE application server..Net is also getting linked with subscription software, which people don't like..Net assumes broadband is the standard, but with DSL providers in trouble, dialup is much more the real world standard. Also, there is that nagging security issue with MS's servers. Do you really want to trust your credity card info, online identity, and all your data to MS's servers?
Xbox: "Powered by Direct X". Don't make me laugh.
As for as the DOJ case, it would be nice if it actually resulted in the government punishing MS for its crimes. But it already served its purpose. For years, MS had to prop up the competition (bailing out Apple, and loosening its control of the OEMs which benefited Linux). Now its competition actually stands a chance of competing. Thanks to MS's insistance on entering a bunch of new markets, its competition now includes such heavyweights as IBM, Sun, and Sony.
Finally, MS's biggest problem: its customers. The sheep are getting miserable with so many razor cuts and burns. MS has dumped trash on its customers for years. Its OS's are not only flakey, but are getting more bratty by the day (no, I don't want to see a movie about how great ME isn't; no, I don't want info gathered about my system to ship off to parts unknown; no, I don't want XP running off with my desktop files). MS is treating their customers like criminals on the one hand (content protection, BSA witchhunts), but is ripping them off on the other hand (subscription software). What ever happened to "The Customer Is Always Right"?
If anything, MS's position today is weaker. It has not had this much competition in a long time. It does not have superior products, or superior anything -- except attitude. In a few years, with or without the antitrust case, it CAN be beaten. The only question is: will you people quit believing in MS's fictional victory long enough to beat them?
"There is something important to do, no matter how hard or painful."
-- Mothra Leo, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
> Your scenario is absurd. Microsoft, a
> publicly reviled company that was almost
> broken up due to anticompetitive practices,
> will now take over the Internet with a strategy
> that will turn everyone against them.
Isn't that exactly what they are trying to do? Check it out:
- MS bolts IE onto its operating system, winning the browser war, but loosing to the DOJ.
- MS tries to embrace and extend (and devour) Java. It looses to Sun, so it comes up with.NET and retools Visual Basic and C++ (now C#) to look just like Java. Never mind that.NET is a couple of years from completion and J2EE is here now. About all MS is accomplishing here is to get both Sun and IBM angry at them. Well, those two and all of corporate America with half a brain.
- MS decides to move to subscription based model to milk its customers forever. Boy is that going over well.
- MS follows months of breakins and security problems with the startling announcement that we are all going to trust all our records to their servers (Hailstorm). This announcement is then followed by more months of breakins and security problems. Gee, I hope they are insured against hail damage.;)
- With XP, MS hopes to replace the MP3 music format with their own (for copy protection and world domination reasons). To that end, they cripple their own MP3 ripping software so that it produces music files of much lower quality than those of its own format. Now it has AOL to help it popularize its own format.
MS is pushing into a variety of new markets, the XBox and.NET represent two of them. In each market, MS is taking on some pretty powerful foes (Sun, IBM, Sony, and until recently AOL). Meanwhile, their attention is so wandering from their core business, Windows, that there has been talk of XP being pushed off to next year if it is delayed any further. That would give Apple's OS X a great window of opportunity to get established before it has competition. Apple's agreements with MS are up next year, and its marketing is starting to get more aggressive. Steve Jobs wants a nice fat slice of MS's desktop market share, and MS's angry customers may just give it to him. On the server side, MS only holds 41%, while Linux and the other unices hold 40% (Linux alone has 27%). Only two more percent to go, and UNIX can overtake MS! OS X may help out here too, as it has a great Java 2 implementation, and the Enterprise toolmakers are lining up to pay the new OS homage by porting their wares. Verizon just bought 600 G4s, and they sure aren't running NT!
Microsoft isn't all powerful. The fact that they can't even get a majority of the server market illustrates that point. Sooner or later their angry customers, powerful new competitors, their mistakes, and the various governing bodies of this planet will catch up to them.
"Mothra, she'll soon be here." "Mothra" July 30, 1961
> Yet Apple zealots happily shell out
> thousands and thousands of dollars for the
> "priviledge" of a fully-closed (hardware *and*
> software) "solution".
In case you didn't read *all* the news attached to this thread: From this day forward, all Macs are to be shipped with an OS based on an Open Source core.
Now explain to me again just how Open Source is "fully-closed " software?
;););););)
"No one's going to die, Mister. Mothra's going to come and save us."
Taiki Goto in "Mothra"
December 14, 1996
Hey, its not just TV preachers playing fleece the flock anymore. Now MS wants to get into the act. "Here little sheep (er developer). Come and let me shear off all that hot smelly code." Being MS, they make hot smelly scratchy sweaters out of it and sell it at a boutique for a small fortune. Exploit the developers, torment the user with BSOD's, and rake in the dough. Ah, but it's "the American way". Funny thing is, the very people dictating "the American way" are the ones currently (at least if/until the appeal goes through) found guilty of breaking American antitrust laws. ROFL
Anyway, its not like MS is doing anything new. They've "shared" their code with others for years now. Usually for a hefty price, or bundled with their development packages. They are just trying to hijack the bandwagon and make it go in their direction.
That isn't going to happen. Why? For one thing, because they are dealing with lots of individuals who will stick to their guns, not a business they can buy or destroy. For another, their continual abuse of their users is turning lots of people against Microsoft. Finally, Microsoft may not be able to exist in its present form much longer. That kind of greed is not sustainable. They've pulled down the wrath of the US and other governments on their heads. We keep hearing of new governments tossing out their Windows software. MS is finding new and unusual ways to torment their users (subscriptions, Hailstorm,.Net, XP's broken MP3 support, copy protection, etc.) They are expanding into tons of new markets all at once (.Net, Xbox, etc.) and each has built in competitors that MS may well loose against. It has already been in the news that MS may actually put off release of Windows XP till next year in favor of the Xbox's release. Any new desktop OS would have both the educational and Xmas seasons in which to establish itself unopposed if that happens. OS X is the best candidate, but Linux could be there too if its community dropped all conflicts and really pulled together and put in a monumental effort. I work for a company where everybody hates MS with a fiery passion. I can't believe we are the only ones that feel that way. We need viable alternatives to MS, and we need them *now*. Get them established while MS is distracted, and rip away a huge chunk of their marketshare in their core business. Then Sun, IBM, and all their other "new"-found competitors can do the rest.
Think Apple won't take on MS? Think again! The only thing stopping them before was that five year deal-with-the-devil and Office. With Darwin, Apple now has the potential to have the open source office suites ported. They already have Apple Works reading Word files. The five years is up in 2002. Apple is starting to compare themselves to the PC on their website. I bet you that come 2002 the gloves will come off. Apple alone isn't much of a match for MS, but Apple, IBM, Sun, Sony, and AOL are. Toss in the Open Source movement and hordes of angry users, and MS is going to be fighting a battle on all fronts, a battle it can't win.
"Mothra is attacking New Kirk City!" "Mothra" July 30,1961
I'll agree with you, freedom is great. But it sounds like you think code should be more free than people. The GPL does great things to insure the freedom of code, but it forces anyone who wants to use that code for any reason, however benevolent, to release all other code touching it with a compatible license. That not only restricts the options available to the programmer considering using it, but may render the code totally unusable, even for a free project, if the licensing is incompatible. Since a good bit of the benefit of free software is code reuse, the GPL can get rather counterproductive.
As for the fruit growing thing, it is wildly impractical. I'd have to spend zillions of hours of overtime each week in the fields picking fruit at minimum wage to make a decent living. How, pray tell, would I then have the time or energy to write programs? What would be my motivation, aside from my own pleasure, for doing so? Plus there is the fun little problem of being handicapped. I can't do a manual labor job. The only way I can make a living is with my brains. Unless your rosy future has me living on Welfare and writing free software?!?
BTW, making millions of copies of Windows 2000 tends to get people sued by Microsoft if they can catch you. Gee, I guess we do have that good ole "Orwellian form of government", at least in the US. And rising up and kicking the rear end of the government can land one in jail, even in a free country, if one breaks any laws doing it. It's best to free one's own code, not the code of others without their permission.;)
> Buy apple...port MacOSX to intel (probably
> in the lab anyhow)
No need to. Apple has already ported Darwin, the open source base of OS X, to x86 and has released it for free. If Apple has any clue, they've already got Quartz and Aqua rigged to move over to x86 with a simple recompile. That's one of the beauties of Unix: portability. It lets them move rapidly in any direction they need to. The G4 chip is nice, but a little too rare for Apple's comfort. Since AOL already runs on Macs, they would only need to produce a carbonized version (it is already in beta now), and recompile it for whatever platform OS X wanders on to.
Oh, come on? Kill Clippy? Bill, you mean to tell me in this era of dubious business practices, the Cue Cat, and the DMCA, you can't think of a single *useful* job for Clippy? Sigh. Why don't you fire some of those idiot marketing yoyos of yours, and listen to your old pal Melantha? After all, who's better at sucking (blood or money), that a 2500 year old vampire?
Here's some (evil) ways to put Clippy to work for you (instead of being a wimpy help for the clueless user):
1) Advertising. Go find yourself some partner companies, and use Clippy to deliver advertising customized to the user's current needs. If the user is writing a letter to a company about their products, have Clippy tell them about your partner's much better products. Microsoft gets the advertising dollars, your partners get a customer, and the user saves the trouble of writing the letter.
2) Gather Demographics. Come on, Clippy is privy to all sorts of addresses and keywords scattered throughout documents all over the planet. Tell him to start reading and phone home occasionally. You can sell all the info he collects for big bucks. The user need never know or even care.;)
3) Outright Spying. Take the plunge, and have Clippy take over any microphones and web cams attached to computers running Office. Who knows what juicy tidbits you might get. I'd clear this one with your lawyers first though. Congress is pretty clueless, but there might be some pesky law standing in the way of this. You might be able to do some deal with the FBI though.
4) Copy protection. Hey, IP protection is the in thing, might as well jump on the bandwagon. Besides, MS has been the industry leader on the anti-piracy front. Clippy can monitor email attachments, and when the user is trying to email their friends an illegal copy of the latest mp3 or Microsoft product, Clippy can notify the police and offer to show the user their rights while they wait for the cops to show up.
5) Parental control. If the kids try to use dirty words in their email or other correspondence, Clippy can notify their parents.
6) Distributed processing. If the computer is not in use for a certain amount of time, Clippy can turn control of the computer over to Microsoft. You can sell the time to pharmaceutical companies for big bucks.
See, Bill, there is lots of money to be made here. Combine these ideas with.Net, and you will rule (and own) the world.
Your friend,
Melantha Bacchae
Disclaimers: I don't really know Bill, and I'm not really a vampire, evil or otherwise (I just play one on the internet). I hate Microsoft and their products (but that's just my opinion). This is a parody; no actual violation of a user's privacy or other rights is intended. Anyone taking this "letter" seriously needs to get a life.
Slashdot Mirror
A clueless AC wrote:
;)
> *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a
> miracle could save it at this point in time. For
> all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
So the solar flare that happened the day of the announcement at Seybold of the release of OS X.1 wasn't enough of a miracle for you?
Sheesh, you just can't please some people. It's okay, Mothra, at least I appreciated it.
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
Yes it is old, and yes, "Millenium" is a "previous" project. If you go to the directory above the Millenium one (http://research.microsoft.com/research/sn/), you find the systems and networks section. Among other interesting stuff, it has this to say:
.Net!
---
Millennium: The MSR Millennium Project was an effort to build self-organizing, self-tuning distributed systems providing high-level abstractions to programmers. Millennium actually consisted of a number of prototypes including Borg, a distributed Java VM; Coign, a system for producing client-server applications from non-distributed COM programs; Continuum, a distributed COM 2.0 runtime; and Millennium Falcon, a DCOM implementation for gigabit networks.
---
(And yes, your eyes do not deceive you. There was supposed to be a Java VM named "Borg".)
One of the reasons a company might discontinue a research project is that the project has moved from research to implementation. Such a move may be accompanied by a name change. Due to Sun's legal victory, Microsoft will be basing their new system on C# instead of Java. But the intent of the original project remains the same.
The Millenium monster stands revealed!
It is
Millenium (a thousand year kingdom) is its destiny!
One problem with all devouring monsters that want to rule the world: they bite off more than they can chew. That tends to give them a case of nuclear heartburn so bad they blow to kingdom come. (At least it did in "Godzilla 2000 Millenium".) Destiny or not, Microsoft simply can't begin to handle such a scenario. Code Red and its brethern are ample proof of that.
Long live Godzilla, true King of the Monsters!
> The record is clear on one thing: no
> operating system has ever come back from > the grave. [...]
>Now is the end time for *BSD.
How about Mac OS? Apple nearly died in 1996. It was far worse off than you think *BSD is now. Only a miracle could save it. The miracle happened on December 14, 1996, when the Mac-loving kaiju goddess Mothra Leo resurrected Hokkaido's scorched forests, along with a lone apple tree. The poor thing was just a sappling, all burned and blackened. She turned it into a mighty tree, ringed with flowers. Days later, Apple announced the surprise return of Steve Jobs, who turned the company around. The next year, Mothra's little friend Fairy perched on an Apple Performa. The heroic, wonder working goddess assumed the form of Aqua Mothra, shooting little OS X logos at her foes. Apple's fortunes immediately rose, and the company turned from near death to miraculous recovery over the next few years. In the current hard times, it is Apple that is among the strongest of the desktop computer makers. OS X is Mac OS reborn as a form of BSD, the desktop's last hope against the coming darkness of XP.
With the early, almost miraculous successes of OS X, the new release of FreeBSD, and OS X.1 due out any day now, there can be no doubt that *BSD's future is bright indeed. Apple is going to take BSD where it has never been before: the consumer desktop, the schools, etc. Apple plans to have all of its systems in the schools converted to OS X/BSD within a year (and it has more computers in the schools than Dell or Compaq). OS X has been favorably compared to Windows XP by the media (then again, anything would be better than XP). With it, Apple hopes to regain a good chunk of their ancient market share.
"Mothra isn't dying. This is just the end of her larval stage."
Cosmos, "Godzilla vs. Mothra"
(This was posted by a computer running OS X, purchased March 24, 2001.)
An AC wrote:
> Symptoms of oppression: [...]
> Symptoms of possession: [...]
Huh?!? Are you by chance responding to the cute little mascot of BSD? Yes, I know he looks like a pop culture representation of a Christian demon. In reality, he is a daemon. "Daemon" is from the Greek, and refers to a type of spirit responsible for some aspect of nature (keeping planets from colliding, helping plants grow, that sort of thing). There is no implication in the word that the being is good or evil.
The UNIX world has adopted that idea in the form of programs called "daemons" that take care of tasks behind the scenes. When you've accessed Slashdot, your browser has been talking to a daemon: the Apache web server. It has been fetching pages for you and allowing you to post on this message board.
By making a daemon their mascot, the BSD folks are honoring those tireless programs, without which, UNIX itself would be impossible (or at least more difficult).
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
An AC wrote:
> The results are all wrong! Objective-C is
> taking over when millions adopt Mac OS X!
Your joke at Objective-C's expense was funny (I never realized how bad it was). But I don't think that is the language that will take over. Remember, Cocoa apps can be written in both Objective-C and Java. Furthermore, OS X has the best Java 2 implementation on the desktop, and Swing apps also have the Aqua GUI. The Developers CD in the OS X box even has a compiler to turn Java aps into clickable Mac apps. OS X is only going to make Java stronger and more popular. Already, OS X is benefiting from the ability to run Java apps that can be downloaded from the web. That's how I'm controlling my Airport in OS X.
Microsoft really shot themselves in the foot when they took Java out of Windows XP. The applications go where the developers go, and the systems where the applications are are the ones that win. Right now, the best systems to run Java on are OS X and Linux. Windows XP looses before it is even born.
"Mothra's attack is working."
Shouta, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Oh, goody, King Ghidora's getting another Leonid event to herald his December return to the silver screen in "Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Daikaiju Soukougeki" (see the director's site at http://www.shusuke-kaneko.com/eng/gmk01.html for details). The 1998 fireballs (which I got to see) occured less than a month before "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks" was released in Japan. And of course, the 1966 storm occured in the midst of Ghidora's career in the 60's. It seems Toho got their Leonid predictions down to an exact science long before scientists did. ;)
For anyone who doesn't know, King Ghidora is a gigantic, golden, 3 headed, two legged dragon that is the leader of a race of planet destroying monsters. He comes to the Earth in asteroid form, in order to destroy it. He is credited with destroying all life on Venus (Mars in the American version of the 1964 "Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster"), and attempting to destroy the dinosaurs 130 million years ago (when he was stopped by a time traveling Mothra Leo). His younger four-legged volcanic brother Death Ghidora wiped out Mars, and drove the dinosaurs to extiction 65 million years ago. The Ghidorans are the ancient enemies of Mothra. King Ghidora and Godzilla have been fighting ever since an infant Mothra asked for his help in "Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster".
Nobody much likes the RIAA or the big five anymore. Not the exploited artists, not the ripped off consumers, and especially not Slashdotters. Heck, we don't even *need* them anymore. So let the DoJ and EU grill them for a few years. Good for them! While the big five are busy defending themselves, as with Microsoft, we will be free to work on replacing them.
Some ideas: recording is no longer an esoteric thing that you need a rich multinational company to provide. Last I heard, all you need is a Mac, about $800, a soundproofed corner of your basement, and some sound skills. That puts recording in the range of a home business, which could provide affordable recording services to local bands (at least some of which are probably as or more talented than what shows up on CDs today). If the recording person either has web skills themselves or can partner with a local web design firm, that would make it very convenient for the bands to not only get their songs recorded, but to get them online. There are existing ecommerce services for shareware that could easily adapt themselves for selling music (a download is a download) and again would make the pricing reasonable. By providing lower prices and more reasonable terms (no time limits, ability to burn onto CD for personal use, etc.), this fledgeling recording industry could easily come to outsell the RIAA sites and eventually replace them. This would be a much better deal for artists and consumers alike.
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
An AC wrote:
> Since the government's request was also denied,
> this is a victory for MS. As a result, there
> won't be an injunction against the release of
> Windows XP in October.
Since the case is going to be remanded on August 12, it isn't that long of a delay for MS. If the DOJ's lawyers have half a brain between them, they'll no doubt be presenting a request for some sort of XP injuction, especially since EPIC typed up that nice 20 page complaint to the FTC, detailing in depth (and legalese) just what is wrong with XP. The antitrust case is not our only hope in stopping XP. We still have the FTC, the US Senate, and the EU (who have their own antitrust issues with MS). The US antitrust rulings also make MS a big, bright target for lawsuits. MS also has several very large and angry corporations (capable of throwing lobbists, lawyers, and campain contributions about) that are getting more angry at MS by the day. MS might be able to take most of them individually, but can they really fight against AOL/Time Warner, Kodak, AT&T, etc., all at the same time they are trying to fight several governments for their continued existance? Add to all that the continuing embarassment of Code Red (a worm attacking MS web servers that has the US government rather alarmed), and Sircam (a nasty Outlook worm), and the fear and anger MS is stiring up in their customers by their latest anti-piracy witchhunt/marketing ploy, and you have the PR blunder of the century!
Even if all the above can't stop the release of XP, there is still hope. Back in 1996, Linux was still pretty much a free OS found in the backs of computer books, and Apple was nearly dead, ashes and blacked stumps all that was left of a once mighty tree. Now Linux commands 27% of the new server market, powerful enough that it can counter MS with the help of its fellow versions of Unix. Apple is back, better than ever, with a beautiful and powerful infant OS X that in its first two months managed to outsell Windows 2000 upgrade and earn a place for itself in the top 10 selling business software packages in March and April. Its applications are on the way, and in September, its faster, more polished version 10.1 will be out. If and when XP is released, it *will* have real competition! MS is so busy scheming, fighting off legal action, breaking into new markets, terrorizing its customers, etc., that it doesn't see the danger its precious desktop monopoly is in.
BTW, one of the groups that are going to be hurt by XP (regardless of whether it comes out or not) is the PC makers. You guys are counting on XP to come and save you, but it is not likely to be well received. You need an alternative desktop OS, and you need it quick. Much as I love Apple, if OS X isn't ported to x86, it isn't going to be much help to you. Get together and make a cute little alliance (as in "save our jobs", not "nice PR photo shoot"). Work with the Linux, KDE, and Gnome people to develop one commercial grade, easy to use, desktop GUI. Go en masse to the commercial PC software developers (except for MS) and sit on them until they port their apps. Appoint a body to oversee continued development, and plop the results on your respective PC's (with extra goodies and whatever icons you care to negotiate for) and sell them. Compete based on added value (without breaking the ability to run programs), but nicely cooperate with the development of the common OS. Short of OS X on x86 PC's or MS coming to their senses, I think it is probably the only way you are going to be able to make a PC that actually (gasp) sells.
"The only thing we have to worry about is to slay King Ghidora."
Shouta, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
GiMP writes:
.Net and they have no reason to support something that endangers the thing they are basing their future on. Fortunately, this comes right after they let their OEMs remove their browser. This is in fact a golden opportunity for an alternate browser with good Java support to step in and get themselves installed on XP boxes instead of IE. MS isn't going to hurt Java much, but they are going to hurt their browser.
> I think you forgot that Java runs on Linux, if it
> doesn't run on Windows.. nobody will use it,
> and instead will use something that doesn't
> run on Linux.
Java isn't going away. It is used a lot in the enterprise sector for distributed computing. The Fortune 500 would not have any trouble making sure all their desktops run a JVM even if MS doesn't put one there. The reason MS is doing this (the lawsuit is a convenient excuse) is that Java competes with
> Sad really that the linux community just
> prays microsoft won't do something evil, and
> they just do anyway.
Boy is that an exercise in futility. MS is evil, greedy and cruel as a ravenous dragon. Don't feed the dragon!
> Someone has to put their foot down and
> stop microsoft.. but how do you stop a 400lb
> Gorilla?
Easy, with a giant moth goddess with a 800 foot wing span and her good buddy Godzilla. Both hate Microsoft, and both love Apple ("Mothra 2", "Godzilla 2000") and Java and open source by extension (because of OS X).
Come on, Tok Wira,
These sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra,
We need you today!
12 days till Mothra's 40th birthday!
Ars-Farsica wrote (that someone else wrote):
;)
> > Yes it is. If you have a jvm that follows
> > spec, and you have java code that follows
> > spec, you have WORA.
> You're wrong. Start multi-platform
> programming in Java instead of reading
> articles about it and you'll very quickly
> understand.
Of course you can have WORA, all it takes is 1) a portable language like Java, 2) careful attention to writing portable code (no MS J++ please!), 3) good support for that language on all target platforms. I've worked on a large project in C that would compile on multiple platforms from the same source.
As portable as C is, Java is far better. For example, I've downloaded a number of Java applications to run on my iBook. The thing is, the operating system, OS X, didn't exist when they were written, yet they still run fine.
How do you like them apples?
Two weeks till Mothra's 40th birthday!
All the exact things that Microsoft is doing that I hate are far too numerous to name (they've been real busy being bad lately). But here are some of the general reasons:
Their cruelty: Yes, their products are among the worst around. In fact, since they do the OS, and a lot of the problems with other software can be traced back to the OS, they bear some responsiblity for those too. I have to use their stupid products at work, and they make the frustration level of my job ten times worse. Let's not even get into the 11 months I spent trying to get Win95 to work before going back to 3.1. It is cruel to treat customers like this, but you know what? MS doesn't CARE about their customers, except to hit them for more money.
Their predatory behaviour: business competition is not supposed to be a blood sport, but just try to tell MS that. It has devoured company after company. Now if these other companies went out of business because MS had a better product, that would be one thing. They don't bother with that. MS makes mediocre products (at best), then uses underhanded tricks and illegal leveraging of its monopoly to crush the competition.
They are way out of control: Read the news. They want to totally control the internet. They want to make you pay to keep your software running. They want to force you to give them all your information, which they will store in a convenient place for crackers to attack. They are using anti-piracy witch hunts (audits) to torture medium sized businesses into accepting a subscription plan as cheaper (note, these are randomly selected companies who may have done nothing wrong, not ones that a disgruntled employee has ratted on). And it goes on and on and on.
MS is making a fatal mistake now. They are making their *customers* hate them. And it is those customers, not the DOJ, who stand to hurt MS the worst. The courts may not order a breakup, but every unhappy customer that wanders off, shaves a little sliver off the MS block.
Come on, Tok Wira,
These sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra,
We need you today!
17 days till Mothra's 40th birthday!
lsdino wrote:
> What I personally like is the guy who was
> installing Office so that people could read
> Word documents. I guess he never heard of
> the freely available Word Viewer program
> which is available on Microsoft's website.
Is it available for the Mac? Because that is what he was running on if he was using Apple Works. Apple seems to be paying attention to the problem, as the latest version of Apple Works now reads and writes Word and Excel files.
20 days till Mothra's 40th birthday!
Heem wrote:
> The problem is that many people WILL pay
> for content.. Majority rules in most
> circumstances and in most, like this one,
> the people who are willing to stand up and
> have their voice heard are the minority.
Huh?!? We are talking about actual people here, right? The types that want free breakfast, free lunch, free dinner, and lots of free beer? In the case of the US, the genetic and moral decendants of those who risked imprisonment to chuck tea overboard because they didn't want to pay tax on it? Uh, huh. And only the minority of these very same people will have the guts to demand that their content be free as well? Okay. So why isn't the price of bread in the millions?
And yes, I remember the days of the BBS. I also had internet access back then, one of the lucky few. The internet had no Web back then, but it still managed to have email, newsgroups, ftp sites, and talk (the old Unix app that would later be replaced by chatting and instant messaging). The local BBS had some files to download, the odd forum, and not much else. If you wanted more, there were the online services: Compuserve and its clones, but you paid and paid and still didn't get what you get today for a whole lot less. Also remember, the online services and early ISPs charged hourly and got very expensive. The introduction of a flat monthly rate was a big boon to the internet's growth.
Copy protection has been done before, and was overturned by market pressure. Charging people by what they've seen and how long they viewed it has been done too, and also overturned by market pressure. People don't want to be told what they can do with what they've bought, they don't want to pay more than what's reasonable, they will pay more only to get more, and they don't like surprises on their bills every month. Get a clue!
Three weeks till Mothra's 40th birthday!
rocur wrote (that someone else wrote):
.Net: they can have it. Let them choke on it!
>> People won't pay for content because
>> they're already paying for access - why pay
>> twice?
> Because the access provider and the
> content provider are different. Lots of people
> pay for both cable tv (access) and pay-per-
> view (content).
Cable TV is both access and content (channels). Both cable tv and pay-per-view are usually paid to the same company on the same bill. To the customer's mind, it is all the same thing: "cable bill".
Do you have any idea what simple access can cost people? I'm not talking T1 or even DSL (we'll get that when the sun freezes over) here, I'm talking simple dial up access. I live in a semi-rural area, some 30 miles from the nearest big city. My ISP just raised its rates to $22. I have to pay over $30 just to be able to call up my access number for "free". That's over $50 for a crappy dial up connection, and that's not even counting the second phone line so the goodies on my main phone line don't foul up my internet access! Now you expect me and the rest of rural America to pony up for the web sites we visit? Somehow, I think a subscription to a few choice magazines and the stamps on a few envelopes to request mail-order catalogs from one's favorite venders would be cheaper by far and accomplish much of what one would use the web for.
Besides, why pay for what has already been paid for?!? Fan sites either run on free servers, or are paid for by the fans who run and love them. The fun they get from the site is their reward (I know, I've done fan sites myself). Corporate sites use content to lure eyeballs to their sites. Getting people to see their products and advertisements pays for the content. Magazines and other publishers mostly use content from their publications that has already been paid for by their advertisers and subscribers. They then get additional revenues for online advertising.
For the most part, this isn't about poor content providers looking to pay hosting fees. If it was about someone in trouble, and I did frequently enjoy their site and believe in it, I'd help out. No, this is about greed. This topic, DMCA, MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft: it all comes down to greed and how much all these exploiters think they can milk their poor customers for, over and over. Leave the sharks to their feeding frenzy, and just walk away. XP, Passport, Hailstorm,
Come on, Tok Wira,
These sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra,
We need you today!
Three weeks till Mothra's 40th birthday!
("tok wira" is Malay from "Mothra's Song",
roughly translated: "heroic wonder-working deity".)
Thatman311 wrote:
;) Upgrades of MS's older OS, Windows 98, are currently outselling (by a widening margin) MS's current OS, Windows ME. This has been going on for a couple of months now, and is probably due to people finally realizing that ME is a whiny brat and a piece of junk to boot (hey, it only took my barely computer literate boss a day to figure that one out). PC sales are in a slump. MS is introducing Windows XP at the end of October, but it is going to be something of a nightmare. For instance, I can just see the reaction of a thousand Windows newbies to having their desktop files automatically go away somewhere. On the other hand, Apple's new Unix based OS, called OS X, is beautiful, powerful, and friendly. In its first two months, the OS X upgrades OUTSOLD the Windows 2000 upgrades -- a real trick considering there are so many fewer Macs than PCs!!! In 2002, all of Apple's deals with MS expire. Then Apple is really going to come out fighting.
.NET, as long as Linux developers aren't silly enough to actually enable it by building a Linux port. Guys, lets face it. .NET is not MS's strategy for everybody's future, it is their strategy for THEIR future. That is their future profit, their future market dominance. If an open source port is made, MS will either profit from it, or haul the evil viral programmers into court for IP violations under the DMCA. Even if you could implement all the open parts without difficulty, Hailstorm and Passport are going to be used for the authentication, and they are firmly under MS control. Just look at the test case in the UK, and what the problems and their causes were there. If you want to do something, make existing alternative open source enterprise networking tools more robust, and better able to work with IBM and Sun's offerings.
> So your saying that MS has compition in the
> OS market? But I thought they were an
> monopoly with no compition in the OS
> market? At least that is what 8 judges have
> said.
One doesn't have to have exactly 100% of the market to have a monopoly. Having a monopoly is not necessarily illegal. Microsoft's problem is that it has 92% of the desktop OS market, an over inflated ego, and a nasty tendency to bully everybody in sight. This has resulted in them doing a number of low down, dirty, and illegal things to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors.
As I said, MS has 92% of the desktop market. Apple has 5%, Linux less than 2%, and various others make up the rest. Though that may seem rosy for MS, there's trouble brewing.
Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in the server market, just a 41% share. Linux has 27%, the other versions of Unix 13% (total Unix is 40%), 19% for the rest. Linux is MS's biggest threat right now, and has the greatest ability to block
MS has managed to make a lot of users very angry, and their work lives very frustrating. People I've talked to are distrustful to downright scared of Hailstorm, and pretty much ridicule the idea of downloading bits of an application for a monthly fee. Oh, MS will find a bunch of sheep to follow them no matter what they do. But there are many people, more than ever before, who are looking for an alternative. Provide them with good ones, and MS is going to loose some marketshare. If the courts won't split them up, their own customers will whittle them down.
"Mothra, come quickly!"
Lola, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
To the AC that posted "If Adobe Doesn't Straighten Up Their Act": Your post is very amusing, but your logic is a little shakey in two areas:
1) We don't know if Adobe is even behind this. The law firm won't even say whether they are working for Adobe. It may be that Adobe is going "KIllustrator, what's that?" while some German law firm is trying to scare some money for itself from some poor person at a university. The insistence on paying up rather than removing the infringing name, and the requirement to name all users seems fishy to me.
2) Since when is Adobe going to care about you burning "pirated" copies of their software? As far as they are concerned, you are not a customer to begin with.
To Adobe: If you are behind this, don't you have better things to do? Like finish your OS X ports before your competitors so you don't loose your precious marketshare? I have valid licenses for both the Windows and the Mac versions of Photoshop. I'm only upgrading to Carbon or Cocoa.
Mothra: 1961-2001 Her heart can reach!
Since a similar fungus has now been found on earth, I think it is far more likely that the MIR fungus is from earth, not space. Once carried to the station from earth by accident, the fungus found the place, with an abundant supply of yummy metal, very much to its liking and propagated like a tribble. That should teach us to watch what we bring into space vehicles and stations with us. After all, once up there, there is no way to stop at Walmart for some pest control products. ;)
As for CD's, just take the same precautions that you would take with anything you want to archive and keep for a while. Keep them in a dry, cool, dark place, away from humidity, acids and other corrosive chemicals.
Mothra 1961-2001:Her heart can reach!
I am very glad to see this. That it is a 30 minute audio file is not the point. It represents a real chance for the good Doctor to come back. Watch it, support it, and let the BBC know that you support it, and if enough people do that, he may indeed come back, to TV, where he belongs.
The one quibble I had was with the following statement:
> Doctor Who is the longest running science-
> fiction series in the world.
Sorry, Doctor Who is the longest running science fiction *TV* series in the world. Godzilla probably holds the movies series record, beating out Doctor Who by nine years. His first movie was in 1954. His most recent movie in American theaters was August 2000. His most recent movie in Japan was December 2000. His next movie in Japan (alongside Mothra, King Ghidora, and Baragon) is this December. Heck, even Mothra first appeared in 1961, two years before Doctor Who. The old girl is celebrating her 40th birthday this July. Actually, Mothra and the Doctor would get along fine. Both are big on protecting the Earth from evil space monsters.
Mothra 1961-2001: Her heart can reach!
Microsoft is running a new PR campaign. It consists of articles appearing all over, complete with pics of a smug, smiling Gates. Investors are supposed to come away thinking their money is safe in a strong, secure Microsoft. Enemies are supposed to tremble in fear of the indestructable juggernaut. The masses are supposed to see MS as their only choice -- for everything. And Slashdot, YOU FELL FOR IT!
;). Expect some bloody chunks of the "Great Devil's" market share to come fluttering down next year. ;)
.Net is also getting linked with subscription software, which people don't like. .Net assumes broadband is the standard, but with DSL providers in trouble, dialup is much more the real world standard. Also, there is that nagging security issue with MS's servers. Do you really want to trust your credity card info, online identity, and all your data to MS's servers?
The only area in which MS has a true monopoly is on the desktop. MS is so smug in that area that they are planning to put out an ugly OS upgrade full of features that people would pay to not have. The strongest alternative is Apple's new OS X, still drying its wings while waiting for all the drivers and apps to be finished (but just look at those spiffy new wing blades!
.Net is a server strategy. MS holds 41% of the server OS market share. All the versions of UNIX (lead by Linux at 27%) add up to 40%. One percent difference does not a monopoly make. Apache holds 60% of the web server market. Given that, I'd say that UNIX and Open Source rule the web.
.Net has other problems. It will be ready in 2 or 3 years. J2EE is here today. In fact the nice folks from Apache have an open source J2EE application server.
Xbox: "Powered by Direct X". Don't make me laugh.
As for as the DOJ case, it would be nice if it actually resulted in the government punishing MS for its crimes. But it already served its purpose. For years, MS had to prop up the competition (bailing out Apple, and loosening its control of the OEMs which benefited Linux). Now its competition actually stands a chance of competing. Thanks to MS's insistance on entering a bunch of new markets, its competition now includes such heavyweights as IBM, Sun, and Sony.
Finally, MS's biggest problem: its customers. The sheep are getting miserable with so many razor cuts and burns. MS has dumped trash on its customers for years. Its OS's are not only flakey, but are getting more bratty by the day (no, I don't want to see a movie about how great ME isn't; no, I don't want info gathered about my system to ship off to parts unknown; no, I don't want XP running off with my desktop files). MS is treating their customers like criminals on the one hand (content protection, BSA witchhunts), but is ripping them off on the other hand (subscription software). What ever happened to "The Customer Is Always Right"?
If anything, MS's position today is weaker. It has not had this much competition in a long time. It does not have superior products, or superior anything -- except attitude. In a few years, with or without the antitrust case, it CAN be beaten. The only question is: will you people quit believing in MS's fictional victory long enough to beat them?
"There is something important to do, no matter how hard or painful."
-- Mothra Leo, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Objectiv3 wrote:
.NET and retools Visual Basic and C++ (now C#) to look just like Java. Never mind that .NET is a couple of years from completion and J2EE is here now. About all MS is accomplishing here is to get both Sun and IBM angry at them. Well, those two and all of corporate America with half a brain.
;)
.NET represent two of them. In each market, MS is taking on some pretty powerful foes (Sun, IBM, Sony, and until recently AOL). Meanwhile, their attention is so wandering from their core business, Windows, that there has been talk of XP being pushed off to next year if it is delayed any further. That would give Apple's OS X a great window of opportunity to get established before it has competition. Apple's agreements with MS are up next year, and its marketing is starting to get more aggressive. Steve Jobs wants a nice fat slice of MS's desktop market share, and MS's angry customers may just give it to him. On the server side, MS only holds 41%, while Linux and the other unices hold 40% (Linux alone has 27%). Only two more percent to go, and UNIX can overtake MS! OS X may help out here too, as it has a great Java 2 implementation, and the Enterprise toolmakers are lining up to pay the new OS homage by porting their wares. Verizon just bought 600 G4s, and they sure aren't running NT!
> Your scenario is absurd. Microsoft, a
> publicly reviled company that was almost
> broken up due to anticompetitive practices,
> will now take over the Internet with a strategy
> that will turn everyone against them.
Isn't that exactly what they are trying to do? Check it out:
- MS bolts IE onto its operating system, winning the browser war, but loosing to the DOJ.
- MS tries to embrace and extend (and devour) Java. It looses to Sun, so it comes up with
- MS decides to move to subscription based model to milk its customers forever. Boy is that going over well.
- MS follows months of breakins and security problems with the startling announcement that we are all going to trust all our records to their servers (Hailstorm). This announcement is then followed by more months of breakins and security problems. Gee, I hope they are insured against hail damage.
- With XP, MS hopes to replace the MP3 music format with their own (for copy protection and world domination reasons). To that end, they cripple their own MP3 ripping software so that it produces music files of much lower quality than those of its own format. Now it has AOL to help it popularize its own format.
MS is pushing into a variety of new markets, the XBox and
Microsoft isn't all powerful. The fact that they can't even get a majority of the server market illustrates that point. Sooner or later their angry customers, powerful new competitors, their mistakes, and the various governing bodies of this planet will catch up to them.
"Mothra, she'll soon be here." "Mothra" July 30, 1961
An AC wrote:
;) ;) ;) ;)
> Yet Apple zealots happily shell out
> thousands and thousands of dollars for the
> "priviledge" of a fully-closed (hardware *and*
> software) "solution".
In case you didn't read *all* the news attached to this thread: From this day forward, all Macs are to be shipped with an OS based on an Open Source core.
Now explain to me again just how Open Source is "fully-closed " software?
;)
"No one's going to die, Mister. Mothra's going to come and save us."
Taiki Goto in "Mothra"
December 14, 1996
Hey, its not just TV preachers playing fleece the flock anymore. Now MS wants to get into the act. "Here little sheep (er developer). Come and let me shear off all that hot smelly code." Being MS, they make hot smelly scratchy sweaters out of it and sell it at a boutique for a small fortune. Exploit the developers, torment the user with BSOD's, and rake in the dough. Ah, but it's "the American way". Funny thing is, the very people dictating "the American way" are the ones currently (at least if/until the appeal goes through) found guilty of breaking American antitrust laws. ROFL
.Net, XP's broken MP3 support, copy protection, etc.) They are expanding into tons of new markets all at once (.Net, Xbox, etc.) and each has built in competitors that MS may well loose against. It has already been in the news that MS may actually put off release of Windows XP till next year in favor of the Xbox's release. Any new desktop OS would have both the educational and Xmas seasons in which to establish itself unopposed if that happens. OS X is the best candidate, but Linux could be there too if its community dropped all conflicts and really pulled together and put in a monumental effort. I work for a company where everybody hates MS with a fiery passion. I can't believe we are the only ones that feel that way. We need viable alternatives to MS, and we need them *now*. Get them established while MS is distracted, and rip away a huge chunk of their marketshare in their core business. Then Sun, IBM, and all their other "new"-found competitors can do the rest.
Anyway, its not like MS is doing anything new. They've "shared" their code with others for years now. Usually for a hefty price, or bundled with their development packages. They are just trying to hijack the bandwagon and make it go in their direction.
That isn't going to happen. Why? For one thing, because they are dealing with lots of individuals who will stick to their guns, not a business they can buy or destroy. For another, their continual abuse of their users is turning lots of people against Microsoft. Finally, Microsoft may not be able to exist in its present form much longer. That kind of greed is not sustainable. They've pulled down the wrath of the US and other governments on their heads. We keep hearing of new governments tossing out their Windows software. MS is finding new and unusual ways to torment their users (subscriptions, Hailstorm,
Think Apple won't take on MS? Think again! The only thing stopping them before was that five year deal-with-the-devil and Office. With Darwin, Apple now has the potential to have the open source office suites ported. They already have Apple Works reading Word files. The five years is up in 2002. Apple is starting to compare themselves to the PC on their website. I bet you that come 2002 the gloves will come off. Apple alone isn't much of a match for MS, but Apple, IBM, Sun, Sony, and AOL are. Toss in the Open Source movement and hordes of angry users, and MS is going to be fighting a battle on all fronts, a battle it can't win.
"Mothra is attacking New Kirk City!" "Mothra" July 30,1961
I'll agree with you, freedom is great. But it sounds like you think code should be more free than people. The GPL does great things to insure the freedom of code, but it forces anyone who wants to use that code for any reason, however benevolent, to release all other code touching it with a compatible license. That not only restricts the options available to the programmer considering using it, but may render the code totally unusable, even for a free project, if the licensing is incompatible. Since a good bit of the benefit of free software is code reuse, the GPL can get rather counterproductive.
;)
As for the fruit growing thing, it is wildly impractical. I'd have to spend zillions of hours of overtime each week in the fields picking fruit at minimum wage to make a decent living. How, pray tell, would I then have the time or energy to write programs? What would be my motivation, aside from my own pleasure, for doing so? Plus there is the fun little problem of being handicapped. I can't do a manual labor job. The only way I can make a living is with my brains. Unless your rosy future has me living on Welfare and writing free software?!?
BTW, making millions of copies of Windows 2000 tends to get people sued by Microsoft if they can catch you. Gee, I guess we do have that good ole "Orwellian form of government", at least in the US. And rising up and kicking the rear end of the government can land one in jail, even in a free country, if one breaks any laws doing it. It's best to free one's own code, not the code of others without their permission.
Mothra 1961-2001: Her heart can reach!
An AC wrote:
> Buy apple...port MacOSX to intel (probably
> in the lab anyhow)
No need to. Apple has already ported Darwin, the open source base of OS X, to x86 and has released it for free. If Apple has any clue, they've already got Quartz and Aqua rigged to move over to x86 with a simple recompile. That's one of the beauties of Unix: portability. It lets them move rapidly in any direction they need to. The G4 chip is nice, but a little too rare for Apple's comfort. Since AOL already runs on Macs, they would only need to produce a carbonized version (it is already in beta now), and recompile it for whatever platform OS X wanders on to.
Mothra: 1961-2001 -- Her heart can reach!
Oh, come on? Kill Clippy? Bill, you mean to tell me in this era of dubious business practices, the Cue Cat, and the DMCA, you can't think of a single *useful* job for Clippy? Sigh. Why don't you fire some of those idiot marketing yoyos of yours, and listen to your old pal Melantha? After all, who's better at sucking (blood or money), that a 2500 year old vampire?
;)
.Net, and you will rule (and own) the world.
Here's some (evil) ways to put Clippy to work for you (instead of being a wimpy help for the clueless user):
1) Advertising. Go find yourself some partner companies, and use Clippy to deliver advertising customized to the user's current needs. If the user is writing a letter to a company about their products, have Clippy tell them about your partner's much better products. Microsoft gets the advertising dollars, your partners get a customer, and the user saves the trouble of writing the letter.
2) Gather Demographics. Come on, Clippy is privy to all sorts of addresses and keywords scattered throughout documents all over the planet. Tell him to start reading and phone home occasionally. You can sell all the info he collects for big bucks. The user need never know or even care.
3) Outright Spying. Take the plunge, and have Clippy take over any microphones and web cams attached to computers running Office. Who knows what juicy tidbits you might get. I'd clear this one with your lawyers first though. Congress is pretty clueless, but there might be some pesky law standing in the way of this. You might be able to do some deal with the FBI though.
4) Copy protection. Hey, IP protection is the in thing, might as well jump on the bandwagon. Besides, MS has been the industry leader on the anti-piracy front. Clippy can monitor email attachments, and when the user is trying to email their friends an illegal copy of the latest mp3 or Microsoft product, Clippy can notify the police and offer to show the user their rights while they wait for the cops to show up.
5) Parental control. If the kids try to use dirty words in their email or other correspondence, Clippy can notify their parents.
6) Distributed processing. If the computer is not in use for a certain amount of time, Clippy can turn control of the computer over to Microsoft. You can sell the time to pharmaceutical companies for big bucks.
See, Bill, there is lots of money to be made here. Combine these ideas with
Your friend,
Melantha Bacchae
Disclaimers: I don't really know Bill, and I'm not really a vampire, evil or otherwise (I just play one on the internet). I hate Microsoft and their products (but that's just my opinion). This is a parody; no actual violation of a user's privacy or other rights is intended. Anyone taking this "letter" seriously needs to get a life.