Microsoft is a monopoly, and an abusive one. That fact has been proven in a court of law, and upheld upon appeal.
So was IBM at one point. IBM was unbeatable, unstoppable. But they were stopped, and gasp, even took the opportunity to mend their ways somewhat.
Now Microsoft is the unbeatable, unstoppable, juggernaut. With Longhorn/Palladium/Millennium and the Hollings bill, they have the potential of going even farther than IBM, becoming a US government mandated monopoly, ruling the computer industry for a thousand years, or even forever.
Of course a monopoly is built on top of customers. While a company maintains a monopoly they can use it (against the law) to shoehorn themselves into other markets and be a real bully. But becoming that bully bears a hefty price tag. Microsoft is very much a hated bully.
Microsoft has managed, with Licensing 6 and other ploys, to alienate two thirds of their customers. If those customers go elsewhere, it is the end of Microsoft's monopoly, and their mad dreams of world domination. That is the danger Linux, Apple, various office suites and browsers pose: an alternative, that has arisen because angry customers want and need a way out of this nightmare. That is how Linux and Apple can stop the unstoppable, and pull the evil monopoly down. Today's monopoly does not guarantee tomorrow's monopoly, or even that tomorrow will come for Microsoft.
That is the irony, badly mangled in the Americanization of "Godzilla 2000": to achieve world domination and begin a thousand year kingdom, only to have Godzilla destroy you the very same day.
Microsoft is a monopoly, an illegal and much abused one, at the height of its arrogance, cruelty, and power. It could lock the world in its iron fist for a thousand years. Or it could be destroyed tomorrow. Nothing is certain but this: its fate is in our hands.
Shinoda: "The age of Millennium." Io: "What does that mean?" Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself. There is one flaw in its plan: Godzilla." "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
In order for Apple to survive and compete with its minority marketshare, Apple has to be different and better than its competitors. Apple has to be able to improve, they can't keep offering the same thing for 15 years.
OS 9, despite all the amazing things Apple was able to get it to do, was still Windows 3.x era technology. While it was more stable than Windows 9x (in my experience), a single faulty application (frequently a bad port from Windows) could bring it down. Instead of getting your work done, you had to sit there and wait for it to come back up (at least it had the good graces not to try to pin its crash on you, unlike Windows' telling you that you didn't shut the machine down properly).
Apple has to move on, or it will die. Its products need and deserve a modern, tough OS that can stand up to today's demands. They took 10 years, many false starts, and one near death experience, to get here. OS X, in its current form, was announced way back in May, 1998; which was four years ago. It will be two years after OS X.0 was released before they stop selling machines with OS 9 installed. And OS X still can run older programs (even many crufty ones) in Classic mode. How much slower and gentler could they possibly make this transition for you?!?
OS X has rekindled interest in the Mac. Slashdotters that once declared eternal hatred for Apple now proudly tote iBooks. Apple's decision to give the programming tools away for free has resulted in a great blooming of new software for the Mac. Individuals and companies that used to do NeXT software have started developing for the Mac. The open source community is porting every Linux app that doesn't sprout legs and run away. Young people, once daunted by the high cost of development tools, are learning to program and creating hordes of new freeware and shareware. Check out the Mac section in your local Borders, and you will see lots of programming books. I think I even saw a book on, gasp, Mac game programming!
Heck if you want a real miracle, look at the server side. Before OS X Server and XServe, Apple had practically nothing on the server side. In a matter of months, they went from nothing to being the fifth largest server maker in the US!
Thanks to OS X, Apple's future shines bright indeed. Which is good for you, because as hard as it may be to upgrade to an OS X only Mac, it is even harder if no one is around to make them.;)
Mothra, Queen of Monsters and Apple's forever friend, first switched on this date in 1994 ("Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla").
For a very short now. Make good use of it by grabbing every bit of Microsoft's marketshare that you can.
> MS makes all their profit on Word and Windows. > This would mean that they can only make a profit > on the Word processor since they're giving away > the GUI and OS, thus halving their profits.
No, they will be basically giving both Office and OS away, as free as AOL disks. Use of the software will be charged for, again and again, and the software will stop working when you stop paying.
At that point, it won't matter what the software is running on..Net will let it run where ever.Net is ported to. A Microsoft port exists for OS X. And Microsoft has duped a bunch of open source developers into porting it to Linux, saving Microsoft the development costs.
The name of the game is "Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish".
And if you think Microsoft has played that game like hardball, you haven't seen anything yet.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it." Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Homage to Fairy Mothra, who first appeared on this date in 1994.
> It could have something to do with CDs costing up > to 3000yen in Japan (and occasionally more) (25-28 > dollars depending on the yen rate).
3000 yen is $24.35 based on today's currency rate and Apple's handy little OS X calculator.
Which I guess explains why I pay $30-$60 for imported Japanese Mothra and Godzilla soundtracks (the $60 being the two disk Mothra 3 soundtrack). Of course I have many hours of fun translating the leaflet, so it is worth it to me. I would never pay that kind of money for an ordinary CD of pop music, let alone for a CD-R. Toho doesn't use RIAA labels, that I can determine, and they do get some of the proceeds, probably more than when I buy the US version of their movies.
General: "Increase voltage" Officer 1: "Turn power up" Engineer: "Captain, we're registering too much voltage for safety now." Officer 2: "Increase voltage" Voltage sound effects, shot of Godzilla struggling, cable burns through, substation fries, Godzilla is free. Scene from American version "Godzilla vs. Mothra" (1964) Simitar DVD
Godzilla and Mothra: boldly going where no starship captain had gone before.
> No, they should be strip searched because they set > of a radiation detector. That is an important > distinction.
Setting a detector off, especially setting a detector off that is known to go off for perfectly innocent people, is no reason to have one's rights tossed in the dumpster. If it is, well I hear that terrorists exhale carbon dioxide. I think we should detect for that too.;)
> True, but radiation sensors raise the bar and > afford one more place where a potential > terrorist can screw up and get caught. Any > security measure in any field can be overcome, > that does not mean that therefore all security > measures are useless.
They are worse than useless if the cops are too busy strip searching the innocent to catch the terrorist. They are also worse than useless if they are detecting the wrong thing in the wrong place. Subways are the domain of the biological and chemical (as well as the plain explosives) terrorist. Dirty bombers would prefer large open habitats of great civic value with high human populations (like ye old baseball stadium).
> Well I don't know if we should be using movies > starring King Kong and Mothra as the basis for > our security decisions.
I'll definitely agree about King Kong (especially Toho Kong). Mothra is another story. You see, she did a movie back in 1998 called "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks". In the original version of the movie, King Ghidora is refered to as "dai ma" or great devil. In the summer 1999 Toho Video release, the English subtitles had "King of Terror" instead. First the King of Terror raided the schools. Then he attacked the cities, starting by flying into a twin towered skyscrapper, collapsing both towers. People ran screaming from the deadly clouds of debris, one man trying to talk on his cell phone as he ran. Mothra went back into the past to kill his younger self who was trying to make the dinosaurs extinct 65 million years too early. This caused his present day self to disappear. Sometime after the presumed death of the King of Terror, he resurrected, more terrifying than before. Mothra, who had also died 130 million years in the past flying his younger self into the active caldera of an infant Mount Fuji, resurrected by exploding out of an "egg" of petrified silk. Covered in silver armor with silver edged wing "swords", Armored Mothra fought the King of Terror in the skies above Mount Fuji and killed him, this time for good.
One could dismiss this as just a movie, but Japanese kaiju eiga is a different breed, more akin to miracle plays and shamanic dances. When you dress gods worshiped by millions of people in rubber suits (or in Mothra's case, a marionette), and have them act out their mythologies and prophecies, the resultant "movies" have a disturbing tendency to come true.
You see, there is a Mothra. You can usually see her up in the sky on a clear day. Of course she is so bright all you see is a big round ball of light.;)
People: "Compassionate Sun, Sun Goddess, Great Mothra! Great Mothra! Mothra!"
Shobijin: "Please open your eyes, Mothra.
Flowers are opening in the sun, Mothra.
Everyone is waiting for you to be present.
The sky turned pale as you pass by,
Your wings shining, flying, grant us this, Mothra." Japanese language "Mothra's Song", "Ebirah, Horror of the Deep"
> If a person runs a service they are liable for > what the users of the service do.
I have a private (as secured as it can be) wireless network, not a "service". Someone who breaks into it is a thief, not a "user". I'm not responsible for what criminals, who are stealing my property, do with it. That is ridiculous.
> A certain amount of privacy should be kept but > not at the cost of life. If reading someone's > email saves someones life, then it was worth the > invasion of privacy.
The government knew at least some of the 911 terrorists were terrorists. INS gave them visas anyway, six months after the fact. No amount of reading emails or securing wireless networks would have prevented 911. Having INS pay attention to the FBI's watch list might have. Rather than dealing with that, they'd rather read our email, secure our wireless networks, and strip search cancer patients. When that doesn't work, we'll go to war with Iraq. Yes, America, the King of Terror hasn't only stolen your heart, he got your brain too!
The only people who stopped terrorists from doing damage on 911 were the courageous people of Flight 93. They didn't let their emails be read. They didn't secure their wireless networks. They, ordinary Americans, gave their lives to stop the terrorists hijacking their plane. Their sacrifice reveals the "save lives at the cost of liberty" position for what it is: a pile of stinky manure. Flinging our rights to the winds does not stop Terror, it enables that reign of Terror called "oppression".
The attack on America by the King of Terror did not begin with 911. The first front, fought and lost, was in our schools. Remember the warnings Slashdot gave then, the voices from the "hellmouth"? The King of Terror first stole the hearts of children, warping them to murder. America responded by turning our schools into prisons. Then he stole the hearts of people in the Muslem world, turning them into terrorists, forming Al Qaeda, attacking on 911. America lashed out in terror again, flinging her rights away. Then the King of Terror took your heart, America, turning it to oppression. Who is this King of Terror? Azi Dahaka, the Great Devil that comes from the sky!
It's not too late. The King of Terror can still be defeated and destroyed! How? Three great powers forge the sword, the heart, which can defeat him. On 911 the King of Terror claimed the deaths of thousands, the three powers saved tens of thousands! These are the three:
What secret only Wisdom knows?
Look to the wisdom of your founding fathers, America.
What weapon forged, Courage shows?
Flight 93 showed what the courage of your people can really do.
What power, Love when freed, greatest of all, can give?
Compassion, of course. Compassion can reach the heart of a lonely, resentful, troubled child before they bring a gun to school. Compassion brought countless people out of the WTC alive because a friend, a coworker, or a stranger helped them out. Compassion is Al Qaeda's bane. They may be able to deceive a naive kind person into donating to a charity that funnels money to them, but true compassion is too wise for them, and has no room for the hate Al Qaeda needs to thrive on.
"The last hope is to fight by ourselves...
Lola, kindness is not enough, look for the reason of hatred and anger.
When you find and understand that, love becomes the strongest power." Belabera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
> Too low? I'd say the detectors are working just > right. Yeah it sucks for these patients, but they > can work this out.
Those patients have rights! They should not be stripped searched because they are receiving treatment for a terminal illness. They should not have to carry papers to prove to the police that they are not terrorists. And they should not be barred from using public transportation.
> I'd much rather have a few false positives than > possibly miss a dirty bomb shielded in lead.
If a dirty bomb was properly shielded, it wouldn't give a true positive (though there are far easier nukes to shield). The police would be busy strip searching cancer patients while the terrorists walked on through. I'm actually surprised with all the pollution from nuclear testing in the fifties and sixties that any detector could work reliably without giving off tons of false positives.
Perhaps everyone should just ride the subways (fly in airplanes, etc.) in their birthday suits. But that might violate your rights, which might induce you to care.
As for the mean terrorists: if they play with nuclear fire, they are gonna get burned, big time. That's what the Red Bamboo found out in 1966, the hard way.
"Once we wake Godzilla, he'll take care of those guys." Ichiro "Godzilla, Ebira, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Sea" (Japanese version, 1966)
As it was before, may it be again. Grant us this, Godzilla! ("Godzilla March")
> Why should they? Open source is of no value > whatsoever to most people.
A more valid point would be that most people may not realize what open source is or what value it is to them.
Open source is of considerable value, or Apple would never have based their OS of the future, OS X, on an open source base (Darwin). Open source web server, Apache, included in OS X, is the major player in the web server market, with over 50% of the market.
And in this case, Mozilla and buddies being based on open source means that people can suggest changes (or gasp, make their own), and get frequent updates and bug fixes. That is valuable, whether you are a heavy browser with a cool idea for how to improve your browser, or the IT department looking to deploy a customized browser for the corporate intranet.
> In fact, given the conclusion (the arguable > conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless) that > IE is superior to Mozilla and Mozilla-derived > browsers right now,
Oh, give the baby a break! Mozilla just hit 1.0 a few months ago! Big brother Goji is gonna get mad if he hears you are being mean to his baby brother. Besides, if IE is oh-so-superior, where are its tabbed windows and ad blocking features?
> it seems like "open source" is a liability > rather than an asset.
Closed source (and $30) iCab has been in "preview" versions for how long now?
> This falls into the same category as the > open-source thing. These features are of dubious > value at best.
In a review I want to see a comparison of features (and even details of feature implementations so I can tell, say who has the best ad blocking features, and who can't be bothered to have any). I don't want to just see features compared on what IE has (the ones Microsoft decides we need to further its world domination).
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape." Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges. "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
> I can only hope that this case gets enough media > attention to make Wal-Mart lovin' Joe Sixpack > stand up and take notice that this whole DMCA > thing affects him as well. I would also like to > think that this will be a good case to showcase > how over-reaching and prone to abuse laws like > this are.
The tide is turning: Joe Sixpack is begining to notice that his freedoms are missing.
On CNN's Talk Back show yesterday, they discussed the anti-Ashcroft ads that the ACLU were running. All four panel members agreed that the ads (showing Ashcroft editing the bill of rights by cutting out and scratching off large sections) were accurate. Phone calls and emails from the viewers indicated that Joe Sixpack also agreed with the accuracy of the ads, and was not a happy camper. It was also pointed out that the ACLU's membership had grown since 911, swelled by people worried about the errosion of their rights. The ACLU's membership now includes well known conservative congresscritters. The Bill of Rights is once more politically correct.;)
This is definitely a case to take to Joe Sixpack's favorite news media. Joe Sixpack can certainly relate to "clip a coupon, tell your online coupon club about it, get hit by Walmart's lawyers". I'd also tell Joe Sixpack which of his congresscritters voted for this dumb law, so he will know who not to vote for in 2004.
Muteki no you, muteki no heiwa, muteki no Mosura! (Invincible Sun, Invincible Peace, Invincible Mothra!)
Been tried and found guilty of multiple counts of breaking the law.
Left behind a trail of broken companies. (No, there are no guaranties or "rights" to success in business, but being viciously attacked by a huge predator is another story. Huge predators should not be running loose in a civilized society.)
Cost countless businesses and individuals many hours of productivity, lost documents, and damage to systems due to faulty software and security holes you could drive a truck through (or so the FBI warns us). Why should the FBI have to issue a warning about a new release of an operating system (Windows XP) in the first place?
Terrorized their customers with accusations and audits into buying more licenses than they needed.
Bullied a third of their customers into accepting License 6 (despite their customers' complaints that they had to cancel projects and lay off workers to afford it), and then Microsoft crowed about their "unearned profits".
The list goes on and on. All of these items have been documented in the media, most in the past couple years. I'm furious with Microsoft for having done these things. And I'm outraged at my government for letting them walk away with a wet tissue paper lease after having been found guilty of committing crimes. Where is the justice for those who have been wronged? Why is this huge corporation being allowed to rampage freely and do more harm?
Time to appeal to a higher court, 55 meters tall!
Microsoft:
The crown is not yours. Footsteps drum a dirge of doom By nuclear rage!
The world's great hero, Dreaded God and Monster King, Millennium ends.
> Err, what do you think powers the magnetic coils? > Fairydust? Nope... big massive coal-burning > electrical generators.
But.. the commercials on CNN, they say coal is an increasingly clean source of energy that will be nearly pollution free by 2010! It's on CNN, it must be true! They even have a website: http://www.balancedenergy.org/
Yeah right, they are going to be increasingly nothing with Bush crippling the Clean Air Act. A look at their site reveals them to be the RIAA of the coal industry, and just about as clueless.
In general trains are a more energy efficient way of moving large quantities of stuff around. But as long as the power source providing the electricity for the magnets runs on dirty energy sources, pollution (air, water, heat, or radioactive waste) is going to be present.
> My question, then, is... where are the little > twin Japanese girls?!?!? > > They've been called the Cosmos lately and stuff > since the kiddy-Mothra movies came out, but > really!
The general name is "shobijin" (means "little beauty"), fairy, or fairy priestess.
In 1992 and 1994, they were the Series 2 Mothra's Cosmos.
In the Legend of the Protecting Goddess Mothra Leo (the late 90's Mothra trilogy) they were the Elias (pronounced like English "alias", with probably the same meaning).
The Mothra of Nilai Kanai (appeared as a moth in the picture on the wall inside the pyramid, and as the horribly mutated Dagara: "da"=corrupted, "ga"=moth, "ra"=Malay "lah" particle) had a human sized shobijin called "Kona" or "the Queen" in the Japanese version, "the Princess" in the American version of "Rebirth of Mothra 2".
Mothra of Yamato (GMK) shared Yuri Tachibana as her shobijin with Baragon and King Ghidora. Yuri could also telepathically sense Godzilla.
> THEY would guarantee complete and utter platform > dominance if they were included as a feature!
Where do you think Belebera is? Mothra Leo sent her to Apple at the end of "Mothra 3" where she could put her technology skills to good use without getting into trouble.
I still wish Apple would port that telepathic interface to OS X. You know, the one the Elias and Fairy used to communicate with Ghogo on the screen of that Mac in "Rebirth of Mothra 2". OS 9 just had all kinds of features that are taking a while to get to OS X.;)
Mothra or Godzilla should do a Switch ad. Oh, yeah, that's right. Godzilla already did one. It was called "Godzilla 2000". Switch or he will stomp you.;)
"What I'm thinking is different from what you are." Belabera, "Mothra 3" 1998
"Your way of thinking is completely different from mine!" Shinoda, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
> Once the appeals court threw out the penalty phase > of the trial
The appeals court did *not* throw out the penalty phase of the trial! They threw out Jackson's penalty, upheld his findings of fact, and sent it back to the lower court for a "less biased" judge to decide on a penalty. She decided instead to force the two parties into a settlement (which IANAL, but that is the strangest thing I've ever seen, a settlement during the penalty phase).
Toss in the 2000 election (in which Microsoft spent three times as much as Enron on candidates), a new Attorney General still in MS pockets from the 2000 election, and you get the settlement the DoJ came up with.
The judge requested public comments, and of the non-trivial (non MS hate mail) comments that were kept, two thirds were against the settlement. Despite that, the judge decided in favor of the settlement, with only minor changes!
> Microsoft could reasonably expect the Supreme > court to be sympathetic to the argument that > having found the judge to have been biased they > were entitled to a completely new trial.
They tried to appeal to the Supreme Court. The supremes refused to hear them and bundled them off to their new penalty phase judge the Appeals court had arranged for them.
> I also thing that the DoJ could have put up a > much better case
The old DoJ put up a great case! They got Microsoft convicted of something like eight counts of antitrust violations that were upheld upon Appeal. The new DoJ dropped the ball.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it." Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Re:Certainly radical...
on
More on Longhorn
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
chrisseaton wrote:
This is certainly a radical approach, and if it was some kind of research project I would love to have a look at it.
The research project was
Millennium
, from the late 1990's. What, you think Microsoft came up with "trustworthy computing" when they did that memo? Or that they started on Longhorn the day XP was released? They have been working on this scheme for a looong time. They had to build.Net just to have a distributed platform-independent development tool they controlled. They are literally betting the company on this.
If you ignore that it's Microsoft it seems to be a really good idea - all programs would be able to access all data from all sources if everything was in this kind of database they are talkking about - today we worry about copy and paste, drag and drop working correctly.
Yes, but unfortunately it is Microsoft. That means bugs, like the flaw in SQL Server (on which Yukon is based) that may well have eaten some of our nuclear materials.
Even if Microsoft made it bug free for once, they are the last people on the planet I'd put in charge of a world-wide distributed network. I don't know who would be safe to have administrate the thing.
To Microsoft:
The crown is not yours.
Footsteps drum a dirge of doom
By nuclear rage!
The world's great hero,
Dreaded God and Monster King,
Millennium ends.
> os9 would never, despite its shabby memory > protection, and pathetic preemptive multitasking, > do that.
Nope, because OS 9 wasn't Unix, and so didn't use Unix terminology for operating system failures. OS 9 bombed, OS X panics (very rarely). BTW, any kernel hacker can, if they choose, get the source code and fix this bug. OS 9 couldn't do that either.
I'm glad, though, that I switched early enought that I got a chance to know OS 9. It really was amazing, despite it being basically a microcomputer OS, all the things Apple got it to do.
OS 9 is the blue-eyed caterpillar, small and awkward, but courageous and friendly.
OS X is the blue-eyed adult Moth, awesomely beautiful, supremely powerful. She soars above all, the peerless Queen of Monsters.
And Apple is, as always, Mothra Leo's Forever Friend.;)
Funny you mention video editing. Even on the low end, your $1,200 PC is never going to run iMovie.
On the high end, your cost comparison is a joke, because the cost of the computer is the least of your expenses. A high end PC based (with Avid or the like) system is going to set you back $100,000 or more.
The cost for a similarly featured Apple video editing system with Final Cut Pro? Less than $10,000.
Read it and weep: http://www.filmandvideo.com/New%20Pages/art icle2.h tml
Worried about this kernel panic ruining your video editing? Don't. You are not likely to be in your Terminal making two directories of the same name and moving them about in the course of your video editing. Even if you were, this is happening in the Unix part of OS X, which is open source, and it is being announced on Slashdot. Someone will probably fix it for fun over the weekend and email Apple a patch by Monday. We'll probably see an official, tested, security update from Apple next week. That is the beauty of open source.
If this were Microsoft and a "blue screen of death", well, don't hold your breath. Their response would be the same as seven years ago: "There are no significant bugs in Windows XP. Trust us.". Yeah, right! That's what PC Magazine said about Windows 95, when I spent 11 months trying to get a stable install of the original version.
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!" Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!" Godzilla: Stomp!;)
> But you must take into account that people who > form a company are already willing to compete with > other companies, and that is usually immoral > (because it deprives other people of money).
Only if you believe in the skewed world view of MSAA (Microsoft + RIAA + MPAA). I didn't buy anything from any of them today (or even used any of their products today), so I'm taking money from them that they could have made had I bought something. Yeah, right.
Companies compete for customer money. To attract a customer, they have to offer the customer good value in exchange. One company has better support, or a better price, or even a friendlier sales person, and makes the sale. The other company looks at the sale it lost (well, all the ones they loose) and see where they have to improve. Nobody is really being deliberately harmed here, they are just trying to get by while giving the customer what they want. If nobody did this, you could not have anything in your home that you were not able to create for yourself from raw materials you grew yourself.
The evil stuff comes in when bad companies lie, cheat, steal, bully, and otherwise do everything to get a customer's business except try to serve the customer's needs. This kind of competition is not the friendly striving to please the customer, but the cutthroat, all out war, attack on the other company kind of competition Microsoft seems to think is the only kind out there.
> The companies who traded with Nazis before the > law was adopted ("Trading With The Enemy", IIRC) > were legally and morally OK, until some point > when it should have been obvious how evil Nazis > are.
I would have thought the first offer of slave labor would have made that obvious, if it wasn't, as others have mentioned, obvious earlier.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity." Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
Here is the current state of the global browser market:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2123095,0 0. html
IE 6 is growing, but mostly at the expense of previous versions. Netscape 7.0 is growing a bit, and Mozilla 1.0 commands 0.8 percent after four months of life.
The numbers above probably do not reflect AOL for OS X being based on Gecko (Mozilla's engine), or the use of Mozilla's younger siblings, Chimera and Phoenix. Nor does it give numbers for system specific browsers on Mac and Linux.
Mozilla, for its youth is doing great! Just look at that huge IE share as a bunch of people who don't know yet that there are better browsers out there.
Posted with Chimera.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape." Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges. "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
> Interesting article but think participating in a > online game is a world apart from participating in > a massive open source project.
Going online to play a game for an hour is really different from an online game community. In the latter, people spend many hours of time working to create addons to the game to share with others.
Take "Creatures" for instance (the early Windows and Mac game, not the later online playing version). Creatures was a game where you bred, raised and cared for artificial life forms, chiefly "norns" (who had their own simulated genetic code, biochemistry, drives, etc.). Creatures had a thriving online community that created and shared genetically engineered norns, objects (created from graphics and the CAOS scripting language), add on programs, etc.
When Creatures 2 came out, it was badly broken. The community cried and screamed, and then set out to fix it. We couldn't do anything about program crashes, that had to come from the company that made it. Multiple teams tackled the insane zombies that used to be norns; my lab at Feral Farms (yep, I'm that Melantha Bacchae) provided the testing facilities for one of the strains of replacement norns. Objects were created to ease transportation snarls and to keep norns from starving to death if they wandered too far from the few food sources. There were even some open source utilities written as I recall. When we got done with it, Creatures 2 was playable and fun.
For the next version the maker, Cyberlife, got too greedy and tried to hoard the development information. They wanted to cut free volunteer work down so they could charge for what we did out of the kindness of our hearts. It didn't help that their newest generation of Creatures were more automatons than autonomous simulated life forms. I didn't stick around for the "online" version.
Different companies have different reactions to user contribution. Cyberlife at first valued it, but later tried to commandeer it for their own profit. Maxis encourages user contribution, hence all the user add-ons that have helped make the Sims popular. Microsoft squashes user contribution like a bug, naturally.
Creatures, however, stands alone. I have yet to see any other game community raise the issue of the rights of the game characters to the point of forming norns rights organizations (ERFN = Equal Rights For Norns) and making death threats over norn torture. Ah, those were the days.;)
Professor Melantha Bacchae Paine University, Albia
Did that get your attention? Good. We'll get to that (misleading) headline in a moment.
There is no discount, people. ZDNet had the story under a similar headline (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-975399.html) with the misleading headline of "Microsoft targets defectors with discounts". If you read that article, it becomes clear that Open Value is an extended payment plan for bad old Licensing 6. Aside from stretching your payments out (thereby "lowering" them), you pay the same money as Licensing 6 plus interest, and have all the wonderful disadvantages of Licensing 6. The only discount at all is a potential 0% financing you might get if you drag your feet and throw a screaming temper fit. Licensing 6 saves you money (only in Ballmer's head) while it costs you more (minimum 33% to 107%).
The people they are targeting are the 66% of their customers smart enough not to fall for Licensing 6. Don't fall for this either, unless your only objection to Licensing 6 was the lack of a payment plan with an interest escape clause based on your temper throwing skills.
As for Microsoft promoting Open Source, that was the subject of an article by Japan Today (http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&i d=240429) entitled "Microsoft to promote open-source software in Japan". This time, they are promoting their "Shared Source Initiative". Which we all know is *not* the same as open source.
I don't know whether Microsoft is purposely sending out a lot of misleading press releases or we have had a really bad press day today, but that sure is a lot of misinformation being spread for just one day. Just goes to show, you can't believe everything you read, especially if it is based on an MS press release.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape." Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges. "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
Yep. "GNU Emacs 21.1.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin6.0)" is in Jaguar.
> Then we would have an operating system (emacs)
Emacs is not an OS. Emacs is one of the world's first windowing integrated development environments. I know, I was using it professionally along with gcc back in 1989. The OS I was using was Ultrix (a version of UNIX).
> in an operating system (OS X), on top of another > operating system (Darwin), all stacked upon the > Mach microkernel.
Not quite. OS X is the graphical version of Darwin (includes Aqua which is a GUI, not an OS).
When you run Emacs on OS X, you are running one fancy editor, one really cool GUI, one OS, and one kernel.
As a long time UNIX user, programmer, and fan, I really love OS X!
"Lightning shines on wavey beach, and all clouds are made right:
Happiness Appears!" From the song "Infanto no Musume" in the Japanese version of Mothra (1961).
> It is not Free Software [gnu.org], as the Darwin > part is APSL, and thus considered non-free by the > FSF [gnu.org].
The FSF is just jealous because the APSL is more free (as in freedom) than the GPL! Which is, btw, very funny.;)
Mind you, the APSL's requirement to free internal modifications is pretty much on the honor system, as Apple is unlikely to know whether you really made any internal changes or not. My guess is that Apple is fishing for all the changes they can get so they can evolve Darwin as rapidly as possible in the early years. Later on, the APSL may become identical to the GPL.
BTW, Apple's Darwin does include some well loved GNU tools, like GNU Emacs and gcc. You don't need GNU/Darwin for those.
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected a charred Apple sapling ("Mosura" 1996). On December 14, 2001, Mothra returned to see its fruit ("Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Ghidora: Daikaiju Soukougeki"). OS X Jaguar: truly the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
> When using Mac OS X I try as hard as possible to > avoid 'ports' of *nix software.
Don't look now, but your hard drive has many ports of Unix software that were installed with OS X. But that is because OS X really is Unix.
> This is simply because unless a decent job has > been done on the porting, the look and feel just > does not fit with the rest of the system. To > make a *nix application fit in with the look and > feel of the system would require a substantial > amount of modification to the code, sometimes > enough that it would be easier to just start > from scratch.
It depends on how separate the user interface is from the rest of the code. If the user interface is well separated, you can just toss that, write a new one in Cocoa, and keep the behind the scenes code. If the program has no graphical user interface, such as say MySQL (an open source back end database program), you can do a fairly straight port.
In this case they are talking about adding the ability to script iTunes with the Perl language the same as you would with AppleScript. No look and feel is involved, and if you don't know Perl you probably wouldn't be using it.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape." Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges. "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
> The Microsoft Emergency Armed Lawyer Response > team are donning their black face masks now, and > are climbing into unusually quiet helicopters.... > > They know where you live, you know..:)
ComTech Officer Miller strides up to the command chair where Mr. Gates is sitting...
Miller: "Supreme Commander, Sir!" (salutes smartly) Gates: "Yes, Miller. What is it?" Miller: "Another MEALR team, sir. It got..." Gates: "Nuked? Again?" Miller: "Yes, sir. It was Godzilla." Gates: "Damn that kaiju! Miller, from now on, let's not waste MEALR teams on OS X programmers.
Godzilla seems very protective of them for some reason." Miller: "Yes, sir!"
TV news reporter: "This is Sandra Hughes for Channel 4 News. According to the latest reports from the GPN,
Godzilla is heading for Redmond, Washington..."
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world. And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it." Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is a monopoly, and an abusive one. That fact has been proven in a court of law, and upheld upon appeal.
So was IBM at one point. IBM was unbeatable, unstoppable. But they were stopped, and gasp, even took the opportunity to mend their ways somewhat.
Now Microsoft is the unbeatable, unstoppable, juggernaut. With Longhorn/Palladium/Millennium and the Hollings bill, they have the potential of going even farther than IBM, becoming a US government mandated monopoly, ruling the computer industry for a thousand years, or even forever.
Of course a monopoly is built on top of customers. While a company maintains a monopoly they can use it (against the law) to shoehorn themselves into other markets and be a real bully. But becoming that bully bears a hefty price tag. Microsoft is very much a hated bully.
Microsoft has managed, with Licensing 6 and other ploys, to alienate two thirds of their customers. If those customers go elsewhere, it is the end of Microsoft's monopoly, and their mad dreams of world domination. That is the danger Linux, Apple, various office suites and browsers pose: an alternative, that has arisen because angry customers want and need a way out of this nightmare. That is how Linux and Apple can stop the unstoppable, and pull the evil monopoly down. Today's monopoly does not guarantee tomorrow's monopoly, or even that tomorrow will come for Microsoft.
That is the irony, badly mangled in the Americanization of "Godzilla 2000": to achieve world domination and begin a thousand year kingdom, only to have Godzilla destroy you the very same day.
Microsoft is a monopoly, an illegal and much abused one, at the height of its arrogance, cruelty, and power. It could lock the world in its iron fist for a thousand years. Or it could be destroyed tomorrow. Nothing is certain but this: its fate is in our hands.
Shinoda: "The age of Millennium."
Io: "What does that mean?"
Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself. There is one flaw in its plan: Godzilla."
"Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Hm, I think you forgot an obligatory adult reference to goats, not to mention any relevance to the topic at hand.
Furthermore, I think your moderation (Score:0, Funny) is more amusing than your post.
Most amusing, however, was the revelation today that both Adobe and the DoJ are customers of ElcomSoft.
But, hey, at least you got first post like you obviously wanted.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra."
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla"
In order for Apple to survive and compete with its minority marketshare, Apple has to be different and better than its competitors. Apple has to be able to improve, they can't keep offering the same thing for 15 years.
;)
OS 9, despite all the amazing things Apple was able to get it to do, was still Windows 3.x era technology. While it was more stable than Windows 9x (in my experience), a single faulty application (frequently a bad port from Windows) could bring it down. Instead of getting your work done, you had to sit there and wait for it to come back up (at least it had the good graces not to try to pin its crash on you, unlike Windows' telling you that you didn't shut the machine down properly).
Apple has to move on, or it will die. Its products need and deserve a modern, tough OS that can stand up to today's demands. They took 10 years, many false starts, and one near death experience, to get here. OS X, in its current form, was announced way back in May, 1998; which was four years ago. It will be two years after OS X.0 was released before they stop selling machines with OS 9 installed. And OS X still can run older programs (even many crufty ones) in Classic mode. How much slower and gentler could they possibly make this transition for you?!?
OS X has rekindled interest in the Mac. Slashdotters that once declared eternal hatred for Apple now proudly tote iBooks. Apple's decision to give the programming tools away for free has resulted in a great blooming of new software for the Mac. Individuals and companies that used to do NeXT software have started developing for the Mac. The open source community is porting every Linux app that doesn't sprout legs and run away. Young people, once daunted by the high cost of development tools, are learning to program and creating hordes of new freeware and shareware. Check out the Mac section in your local Borders, and you will see lots of programming books. I think I even saw a book on, gasp, Mac game programming!
Heck if you want a real miracle, look at the server side. Before OS X Server and XServe, Apple had practically nothing on the server side. In a matter of months, they went from nothing to being the fifth largest server maker in the US!
Thanks to OS X, Apple's future shines bright indeed. Which is good for you, because as hard as it may be to upgrade to an OS X only Mac, it is even harder if no one is around to make them.
Mothra, Queen of Monsters and Apple's forever friend, first switched on this date in 1994 ("Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla").
91degrees wrote:
.Net will let it run where ever .Net is ported to. A Microsoft port exists for OS X. And Microsoft has duped a bunch of open source developers into porting it to Linux, saving Microsoft the development costs.
> We're safe for now.
For a very short now. Make good use of it by grabbing every bit of Microsoft's marketshare that you can.
> MS makes all their profit on Word and Windows.
> This would mean that they can only make a profit
> on the Word processor since they're giving away
> the GUI and OS, thus halving their profits.
No, they will be basically giving both Office and OS away, as free as AOL disks. Use of the software will be charged for, again and again, and the software will stop working when you stop paying.
At that point, it won't matter what the software is running on.
The name of the game is "Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish".
And if you think Microsoft has played that game like hardball, you haven't seen anything yet.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Homage to Fairy Mothra, who first appeared on this date in 1994.
An AC wrote:
> It could have something to do with CDs costing up
> to 3000yen in Japan (and occasionally more) (25-28
> dollars depending on the yen rate).
3000 yen is $24.35 based on today's currency rate and Apple's handy little OS X calculator.
Which I guess explains why I pay $30-$60 for imported Japanese Mothra and Godzilla soundtracks (the $60 being the two disk Mothra 3 soundtrack). Of course I have many hours of fun translating the leaflet, so it is worth it to me. I would never pay that kind of money for an ordinary CD of pop music, let alone for a CD-R. Toho doesn't use RIAA labels, that I can determine, and they do get some of the proceeds, probably more than when I buy the US version of their movies.
General: "Increase voltage"
Officer 1: "Turn power up"
Engineer: "Captain, we're registering too much voltage for safety now."
Officer 2: "Increase voltage"
Voltage sound effects, shot of Godzilla struggling, cable burns through, substation fries, Godzilla is free.
Scene from American version "Godzilla vs. Mothra" (1964) Simitar DVD
Godzilla and Mothra: boldly going where no starship captain had gone before.
overunderunderdone wrote:
;)
;)
> No, they should be strip searched because they set
> of a radiation detector. That is an important
> distinction.
Setting a detector off, especially setting a detector off that is known to go off for perfectly innocent people, is no reason to have one's rights tossed in the dumpster. If it is, well I hear that terrorists exhale carbon dioxide. I think we should detect for that too.
> True, but radiation sensors raise the bar and
> afford one more place where a potential
> terrorist can screw up and get caught. Any
> security measure in any field can be overcome,
> that does not mean that therefore all security
> measures are useless.
They are worse than useless if the cops are too busy strip searching the innocent to catch the terrorist. They are also worse than useless if they are detecting the wrong thing in the wrong place. Subways are the domain of the biological and chemical (as well as the plain explosives) terrorist. Dirty bombers would prefer large open habitats of great civic value with high human populations (like ye old baseball stadium).
> Well I don't know if we should be using movies
> starring King Kong and Mothra as the basis for
> our security decisions.
I'll definitely agree about King Kong (especially Toho Kong). Mothra is another story. You see, she did a movie back in 1998 called "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks". In the original version of the movie, King Ghidora is refered to as "dai ma" or great devil. In the summer 1999 Toho Video release, the English subtitles had "King of Terror" instead. First the King of Terror raided the schools. Then he attacked the cities, starting by flying into a twin towered skyscrapper, collapsing both towers. People ran screaming from the deadly clouds of debris, one man trying to talk on his cell phone as he ran. Mothra went back into the past to kill his younger self who was trying to make the dinosaurs extinct 65 million years too early. This caused his present day self to disappear. Sometime after the presumed death of the King of Terror, he resurrected, more terrifying than before. Mothra, who had also died 130 million years in the past flying his younger self into the active caldera of an infant Mount Fuji, resurrected by exploding out of an "egg" of petrified silk. Covered in silver armor with silver edged wing "swords", Armored Mothra fought the King of Terror in the skies above Mount Fuji and killed him, this time for good.
One could dismiss this as just a movie, but Japanese kaiju eiga is a different breed, more akin to miracle plays and shamanic dances. When you dress gods worshiped by millions of people in rubber suits (or in Mothra's case, a marionette), and have them act out their mythologies and prophecies, the resultant "movies" have a disturbing tendency to come true.
You see, there is a Mothra. You can usually see her up in the sky on a clear day. Of course she is so bright all you see is a big round ball of light.
People:
"Compassionate Sun, Sun Goddess, Great Mothra! Great Mothra! Mothra!"
Shobijin:
"Please open your eyes, Mothra.
Flowers are opening in the sun, Mothra.
Everyone is waiting for you to be present.
The sky turned pale as you pass by,
Your wings shining, flying, grant us this, Mothra."
Japanese language "Mothra's Song", "Ebirah, Horror of the Deep"
brendanoconnorwrote:
> If a person runs a service they are liable for
> what the users of the service do.
I have a private (as secured as it can be) wireless network, not a "service". Someone who breaks into it is a thief, not a "user". I'm not responsible for what criminals, who are stealing my property, do with it. That is ridiculous.
> A certain amount of privacy should be kept but
> not at the cost of life. If reading someone's
> email saves someones life, then it was worth the
> invasion of privacy.
The government knew at least some of the 911 terrorists were terrorists. INS gave them visas anyway, six months after the fact. No amount of reading emails or securing wireless networks would have prevented 911. Having INS pay attention to the FBI's watch list might have. Rather than dealing with that, they'd rather read our email, secure our wireless networks, and strip search cancer patients. When that doesn't work, we'll go to war with Iraq. Yes, America, the King of Terror hasn't only stolen your heart, he got your brain too!
The only people who stopped terrorists from doing damage on 911 were the courageous people of Flight 93. They didn't let their emails be read. They didn't secure their wireless networks. They, ordinary Americans, gave their lives to stop the terrorists hijacking their plane. Their sacrifice reveals the "save lives at the cost of liberty" position for what it is: a pile of stinky manure. Flinging our rights to the winds does not stop Terror, it enables that reign of Terror called "oppression".
The attack on America by the King of Terror did not begin with 911. The first front, fought and lost, was in our schools. Remember the warnings Slashdot gave then, the voices from the "hellmouth"? The King of Terror first stole the hearts of children, warping them to murder. America responded by turning our schools into prisons. Then he stole the hearts of people in the Muslem world, turning them into terrorists, forming Al Qaeda, attacking on 911. America lashed out in terror again, flinging her rights away. Then the King of Terror took your heart, America, turning it to oppression. Who is this King of Terror? Azi Dahaka, the Great Devil that comes from the sky!
It's not too late. The King of Terror can still be defeated and destroyed! How? Three great powers forge the sword, the heart, which can defeat him. On 911 the King of Terror claimed the deaths of thousands, the three powers saved tens of thousands! These are the three:
What secret only Wisdom knows?
Look to the wisdom of your founding fathers, America.
What weapon forged, Courage shows?
Flight 93 showed what the courage of your people can really do.
What power, Love when freed, greatest of all, can give?
Compassion, of course. Compassion can reach the heart of a lonely, resentful, troubled child before they bring a gun to school. Compassion brought countless people out of the WTC alive because a friend, a coworker, or a stranger helped them out. Compassion is Al Qaeda's bane. They may be able to deceive a naive kind person into donating to a charity that funnels money to them, but true compassion is too wise for them, and has no room for the hate Al Qaeda needs to thrive on.
"The last hope is to fight by ourselves...
Lola, kindness is not enough, look for the reason of hatred and anger.
When you find and understand that, love becomes the strongest power."
Belabera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
tswinzig wrote:
> Too low? I'd say the detectors are working just
> right. Yeah it sucks for these patients, but they
> can work this out.
Those patients have rights! They should not be stripped searched because they are receiving treatment for a terminal illness. They should not have to carry papers to prove to the police that they are not terrorists. And they should not be barred from using public transportation.
> I'd much rather have a few false positives than
> possibly miss a dirty bomb shielded in lead.
If a dirty bomb was properly shielded, it wouldn't give a true positive (though there are far easier nukes to shield). The police would be busy strip searching cancer patients while the terrorists walked on through. I'm actually surprised with all the pollution from nuclear testing in the fifties and sixties that any detector could work reliably without giving off tons of false positives.
Perhaps everyone should just ride the subways (fly in airplanes, etc.) in their birthday suits. But that might violate your rights, which might induce you to care.
As for the mean terrorists: if they play with nuclear fire, they are gonna get burned, big time. That's what the Red Bamboo found out in 1966, the hard way.
"Once we wake Godzilla, he'll take care of those guys."
Ichiro "Godzilla, Ebira, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Sea" (Japanese version, 1966)
As it was before, may it be again. Grant us this, Godzilla! ("Godzilla March")
Twirlip of the Mists wrote:
> Why should they? Open source is of no value
> whatsoever to most people.
A more valid point would be that most people may not realize what open source is or what value it is to them.
Open source is of considerable value, or Apple would never have based their OS of the future, OS X, on an open source base (Darwin). Open source web server, Apache, included in OS X, is the major player in the web server market, with over 50% of the market.
And in this case, Mozilla and buddies being based on open source means that people can suggest changes (or gasp, make their own), and get frequent updates and bug fixes. That is valuable, whether you are a heavy browser with a cool idea for how to improve your browser, or the IT department looking to deploy a customized browser for the corporate intranet.
> In fact, given the conclusion (the arguable
> conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless) that
> IE is superior to Mozilla and Mozilla-derived
> browsers right now,
Oh, give the baby a break! Mozilla just hit 1.0 a few months ago! Big brother Goji is gonna get mad if he hears you are being mean to his baby brother. Besides, if IE is oh-so-superior, where are its tabbed windows and ad blocking features?
> it seems like "open source" is a liability
> rather than an asset.
Closed source (and $30) iCab has been in "preview" versions for how long now?
> This falls into the same category as the
> open-source thing. These features are of dubious
> value at best.
In a review I want to see a comparison of features (and even details of feature implementations so I can tell, say who has the best ad blocking features, and who can't be bothered to have any). I don't want to just see features compared on what IE has (the ones Microsoft decides we need to further its world domination).
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
digitalmuse wrote:
;)
> I can only hope that this case gets enough media
> attention to make Wal-Mart lovin' Joe Sixpack
> stand up and take notice that this whole DMCA
> thing affects him as well. I would also like to
> think that this will be a good case to showcase
> how over-reaching and prone to abuse laws like
> this are.
The tide is turning: Joe Sixpack is begining to notice that his freedoms are missing.
On CNN's Talk Back show yesterday, they discussed the anti-Ashcroft ads that the ACLU were running. All four panel members agreed that the ads (showing Ashcroft editing the bill of rights by cutting out and scratching off large sections) were accurate. Phone calls and emails from the viewers indicated that Joe Sixpack also agreed with the accuracy of the ads, and was not a happy camper. It was also pointed out that the ACLU's membership had grown since 911, swelled by people worried about the errosion of their rights. The ACLU's membership now includes well known conservative congresscritters. The Bill of Rights is once more politically correct.
This is definitely a case to take to Joe Sixpack's favorite news media. Joe Sixpack can certainly relate to "clip a coupon, tell your online coupon club about it, get hit by Walmart's lawyers". I'd also tell Joe Sixpack which of his congresscritters voted for this dumb law, so he will know who not to vote for in 2004.
Muteki no you, muteki no heiwa, muteki no Mosura!
(Invincible Sun, Invincible Peace, Invincible Mothra!)
I'm not tired, I'm furious!
Microsoft has:
Been tried and found guilty of multiple counts of breaking the law.
Left behind a trail of broken companies. (No, there are no guaranties or "rights" to success in business, but being viciously attacked by a huge predator is another story. Huge predators should not be running loose in a civilized society.)
Cost countless businesses and individuals many hours of productivity, lost documents, and damage to systems due to faulty software and security holes you could drive a truck through (or so the FBI warns us). Why should the FBI have to issue a warning about a new release of an operating system (Windows XP) in the first place?
Terrorized their customers with accusations and audits into buying more licenses than they needed.
Bullied a third of their customers into accepting License 6 (despite their customers' complaints that they had to cancel projects and lay off workers to afford it), and then Microsoft crowed about their "unearned profits".
The list goes on and on. All of these items have been documented in the media, most in the past couple years. I'm furious with Microsoft for having done these things. And I'm outraged at my government for letting them walk away with a wet tissue paper lease after having been found guilty of committing crimes. Where is the justice for those who have been wronged? Why is this huge corporation being allowed to rampage freely and do more harm?
Time to appeal to a higher court, 55 meters tall!
Microsoft:
The crown is not yours.
Footsteps drum a dirge of doom
By nuclear rage!
The world's great hero,
Dreaded God and Monster King,
Millennium ends.
Lieutenant_Dan wrote:
... big massive coal-burning
> Err, what do you think powers the magnetic coils?
> Fairydust? Nope
> electrical generators.
But.. the commercials on CNN, they say coal is an increasingly clean source of energy that will be nearly pollution free by 2010! It's on CNN, it must be true! They even have a website: http://www.balancedenergy.org/
Yeah right, they are going to be increasingly nothing with Bush crippling the Clean Air Act. A look at their site reveals them to be the RIAA of the coal industry, and just about as clueless.
In general trains are a more energy efficient way of moving large quantities of stuff around. But as long as the power source providing the electricity for the magnets runs on dirty energy sources, pollution (air, water, heat, or radioactive waste) is going to be present.
"Is Godzilla showing his hatred toward man-made energy?"
Shinoda, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
dr00g911 wrote:
;)
;)
> My question, then, is... where are the little
> twin Japanese girls?!?!?
>
> They've been called the Cosmos lately and stuff
> since the kiddy-Mothra movies came out, but
> really!
The general name is "shobijin" (means "little beauty"), fairy, or fairy priestess.
In 1992 and 1994, they were the Series 2 Mothra's Cosmos.
In the Legend of the Protecting Goddess Mothra Leo (the late 90's Mothra trilogy) they were the Elias (pronounced like English "alias", with probably the same meaning).
The Mothra of Nilai Kanai (appeared as a moth in the picture on the wall inside the pyramid, and as the horribly mutated Dagara: "da"=corrupted, "ga"=moth, "ra"=Malay "lah" particle) had a human sized shobijin called "Kona" or "the Queen" in the Japanese version, "the Princess" in the American version of "Rebirth of Mothra 2".
Mothra of Yamato (GMK) shared Yuri Tachibana as her shobijin with Baragon and King Ghidora. Yuri could also telepathically sense Godzilla.
> THEY would guarantee complete and utter platform
> dominance if they were included as a feature!
Where do you think Belebera is? Mothra Leo sent her to Apple at the end of "Mothra 3" where she could put her technology skills to good use without getting into trouble.
I still wish Apple would port that telepathic interface to OS X. You know, the one the Elias and Fairy used to communicate with Ghogo on the screen of that Mac in "Rebirth of Mothra 2". OS 9 just had all kinds of features that are taking a while to get to OS X.
Mothra or Godzilla should do a Switch ad. Oh, yeah, that's right. Godzilla already did one. It was called "Godzilla 2000". Switch or he will stomp you.
"What I'm thinking is different from what you are."
Belabera, "Mothra 3" 1998
"Your way of thinking is completely different from mine!"
Shinoda, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Zeinfeld wrote:
> Once the appeals court threw out the penalty phase
> of the trial
The appeals court did *not* throw out the penalty phase of the trial! They threw out Jackson's penalty, upheld his findings of fact, and sent it back to the lower court for a "less biased" judge to decide on a penalty. She decided instead to force the two parties into a settlement (which IANAL, but that is the strangest thing I've ever seen, a settlement during the penalty phase).
Toss in the 2000 election (in which Microsoft spent three times as much as Enron on candidates), a new Attorney General still in MS pockets from the 2000 election, and you get the settlement the DoJ came up with.
The judge requested public comments, and of the non-trivial (non MS hate mail) comments that were kept, two thirds were against the settlement. Despite that, the judge decided in favor of the settlement, with only minor changes!
> Microsoft could reasonably expect the Supreme
> court to be sympathetic to the argument that
> having found the judge to have been biased they
> were entitled to a completely new trial.
They tried to appeal to the Supreme Court. The supremes refused to hear them and bundled them off to their new penalty phase judge the Appeals court had arranged for them.
> I also thing that the DoJ could have put up a
> much better case
The old DoJ put up a great case! They got Microsoft convicted of something like eight counts of antitrust violations that were upheld upon Appeal. The new DoJ dropped the ball.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
chrisseaton wrote:
The research project was Millennium , from the late 1990's. What, you think Microsoft came up with "trustworthy computing" when they did that memo? Or that they started on Longhorn the day XP was released? They have been working on this scheme for a looong time. They had to build .Net just to have a distributed platform-independent development tool they controlled. They are literally betting the company on this.
Yes, but unfortunately it is Microsoft. That means bugs, like the flaw in SQL Server (on which Yukon is based) that may well have eaten some of our nuclear materials.
Even if Microsoft made it bug free for once, they are the last people on the planet I'd put in charge of a world-wide distributed network. I don't know who would be safe to have administrate the thing.
To Microsoft:
The crown is not yours.
Footsteps drum a dirge of doom
By nuclear rage!
The world's great hero,
Dreaded God and Monster King,
Millennium ends.
krel wrote:
;)
> os9 would never, despite its shabby memory
> protection, and pathetic preemptive multitasking,
> do that.
Nope, because OS 9 wasn't Unix, and so didn't use Unix terminology for operating system failures. OS 9 bombed, OS X panics (very rarely). BTW, any kernel hacker can, if they choose, get the source code and fix this bug. OS 9 couldn't do that either.
I'm glad, though, that I switched early enought that I got a chance to know OS 9. It really was amazing, despite it being basically a microcomputer OS, all the things Apple got it to do.
OS 9 is the blue-eyed caterpillar, small and awkward, but courageous and friendly.
OS X is the blue-eyed adult Moth, awesomely beautiful, supremely powerful. She soars above all, the peerless Queen of Monsters.
And Apple is, as always, Mothra Leo's Forever Friend.
Funny you mention video editing. Even on the low end, your $1,200 PC is never going to run iMovie.
t icle2.h tml
;)
On the high end, your cost comparison is a joke, because the cost of the computer is the least of your expenses. A high end PC based (with Avid or the like) system is going to set you back $100,000 or more.
The cost for a similarly featured Apple video editing system with Final Cut Pro? Less than $10,000.
Read it and weep:
http://www.filmandvideo.com/New%20Pages/ar
Worried about this kernel panic ruining your video editing? Don't. You are not likely to be in your Terminal making two directories of the same name and moving them about in the course of your video editing. Even if you were, this is happening in the Unix part of OS X, which is open source, and it is being announced on Slashdot. Someone will probably fix it for fun over the weekend and email Apple a patch by Monday. We'll probably see an official, tested, security update from Apple next week. That is the beauty of open source.
If this were Microsoft and a "blue screen of death", well, don't hold your breath. Their response would be the same as seven years ago: "There are no significant bugs in Windows XP. Trust us.". Yeah, right! That's what PC Magazine said about Windows 95, when I spent 11 months trying to get a stable install of the original version.
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp!
tftp wrote:
> But you must take into account that people who
> form a company are already willing to compete with
> other companies, and that is usually immoral
> (because it deprives other people of money).
Only if you believe in the skewed world view of MSAA (Microsoft + RIAA + MPAA). I didn't buy anything from any of them today (or even used any of their products today), so I'm taking money from them that they could have made had I bought something. Yeah, right.
Companies compete for customer money. To attract a customer, they have to offer the customer good value in exchange. One company has better support, or a better price, or even a friendlier sales person, and makes the sale. The other company looks at the sale it lost (well, all the ones they loose) and see where they have to improve. Nobody is really being deliberately harmed here, they are just trying to get by while giving the customer what they want. If nobody did this, you could not have anything in your home that you were not able to create for yourself from raw materials you grew yourself.
The evil stuff comes in when bad companies lie, cheat, steal, bully, and otherwise do everything to get a customer's business except try to serve the customer's needs. This kind of competition is not the friendly striving to please the customer, but the cutthroat, all out war, attack on the other company kind of competition Microsoft seems to think is the only kind out there.
> The companies who traded with Nazis before the
> law was adopted ("Trading With The Enemy", IIRC)
> were legally and morally OK, until some point
> when it should have been obvious how evil Nazis
> are.
I would have thought the first offer of slave labor would have made that obvious, if it wasn't, as others have mentioned, obvious earlier.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
Here is the current state of the global browser market:
0 0. html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2123095,
IE 6 is growing, but mostly at the expense of previous versions. Netscape 7.0 is growing a bit, and Mozilla 1.0 commands 0.8 percent after four months of life.
The numbers above probably do not reflect AOL for OS X being based on Gecko (Mozilla's engine), or the use of Mozilla's younger siblings, Chimera and Phoenix. Nor does it give numbers for system specific browsers on Mac and Linux.
Mozilla, for its youth is doing great! Just look at that huge IE share as a bunch of people who don't know yet that there are better browsers out there.
Posted with Chimera.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
Arimus wrote:
;)
> Interesting article but think participating in a
> online game is a world apart from participating in
> a massive open source project.
Going online to play a game for an hour is really different from an online game community. In the latter, people spend many hours of time working to create addons to the game to share with others.
Take "Creatures" for instance (the early Windows and Mac game, not the later online playing version). Creatures was a game where you bred, raised and cared for artificial life forms, chiefly "norns" (who had their own simulated genetic code, biochemistry, drives, etc.). Creatures had a thriving online community that created and shared genetically engineered norns, objects (created from graphics and the CAOS scripting language), add on programs, etc.
When Creatures 2 came out, it was badly broken. The community cried and screamed, and then set out to fix it. We couldn't do anything about program crashes, that had to come from the company that made it. Multiple teams tackled the insane zombies that used to be norns; my lab at Feral Farms (yep, I'm that Melantha Bacchae) provided the testing facilities for one of the strains of replacement norns. Objects were created to ease transportation snarls and to keep norns from starving to death if they wandered too far from the few food sources. There were even some open source utilities written as I recall. When we got done with it, Creatures 2 was playable and fun.
For the next version the maker, Cyberlife, got too greedy and tried to hoard the development information. They wanted to cut free volunteer work down so they could charge for what we did out of the kindness of our hearts. It didn't help that their newest generation of Creatures were more automatons than autonomous simulated life forms. I didn't stick around for the "online" version.
Different companies have different reactions to user contribution. Cyberlife at first valued it, but later tried to commandeer it for their own profit. Maxis encourages user contribution, hence all the user add-ons that have helped make the Sims popular. Microsoft squashes user contribution like a bug, naturally.
Creatures, however, stands alone. I have yet to see any other game community raise the issue of the rights of the game characters to the point of forming norns rights organizations (ERFN = Equal Rights For Norns) and making death threats over norn torture. Ah, those were the days.
Professor Melantha Bacchae
Paine University, Albia
Did that get your attention? Good. We'll get to that (misleading) headline in a moment.
i d=240429) entitled "Microsoft to promote open-source software in Japan". This time, they are promoting their "Shared Source Initiative". Which we all know is *not* the same as open source.
There is no discount, people. ZDNet had the story under a similar headline (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-975399.html) with the misleading headline of "Microsoft targets defectors with discounts". If you read that article, it becomes clear that Open Value is an extended payment plan for bad old Licensing 6. Aside from stretching your payments out (thereby "lowering" them), you pay the same money as Licensing 6 plus interest, and have all the wonderful disadvantages of Licensing 6. The only discount at all is a potential 0% financing you might get if you drag your feet and throw a screaming temper fit. Licensing 6 saves you money (only in Ballmer's head) while it costs you more (minimum 33% to 107%).
The people they are targeting are the 66% of their customers smart enough not to fall for Licensing 6. Don't fall for this either, unless your only objection to Licensing 6 was the lack of a payment plan with an interest escape clause based on your temper throwing skills.
As for Microsoft promoting Open Source, that was the subject of an article by Japan Today (http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&
I don't know whether Microsoft is purposely sending out a lot of misleading press releases or we have had a really bad press day today, but that sure is a lot of misinformation being spread for just one day. Just goes to show, you can't believe everything you read, especially if it is based on an MS press release.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
RAMMS+EIN wrote:
> GNU emacs? Do they ship that with OS X, too?
Yep. "GNU Emacs 21.1.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin6.0)" is in Jaguar.
> Then we would have an operating system (emacs)
Emacs is not an OS. Emacs is one of the world's first windowing integrated development environments. I know, I was using it professionally along with gcc back in 1989. The OS I was using was Ultrix (a version of UNIX).
> in an operating system (OS X), on top of another
> operating system (Darwin), all stacked upon the
> Mach microkernel.
Not quite. OS X is the graphical version of Darwin (includes Aqua which is a GUI, not an OS).
When you run Emacs on OS X, you are running one fancy editor, one really cool GUI, one OS, and one kernel.
As a long time UNIX user, programmer, and fan, I really love OS X!
"Lightning shines on wavey beach, and all clouds are made right:
Happiness Appears!"
From the song "Infanto no Musume" in the Japanese version of Mothra (1961).
RAMMS+EIN wrote:
;)
> It is not Free Software [gnu.org], as the Darwin
> part is APSL, and thus considered non-free by the
> FSF [gnu.org].
The FSF is just jealous because the APSL is more free (as in freedom) than the GPL! Which is, btw, very funny.
Mind you, the APSL's requirement to free internal modifications is pretty much on the honor system, as Apple is unlikely to know whether you really made any internal changes or not. My guess is that Apple is fishing for all the changes they can get so they can evolve Darwin as rapidly as possible in the early years. Later on, the APSL may become identical to the GPL.
BTW, Apple's Darwin does include some well loved GNU tools, like GNU Emacs and gcc. You don't need GNU/Darwin for those.
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected a charred Apple sapling ("Mosura" 1996).
On December 14, 2001, Mothra returned to see its fruit ("Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Ghidora: Daikaiju Soukougeki").
OS X Jaguar: truly the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
bdash wrote:
> When using Mac OS X I try as hard as possible to
> avoid 'ports' of *nix software.
Don't look now, but your hard drive has many ports of Unix software that were installed with OS X. But that is because OS X really is Unix.
> This is simply because unless a decent job has
> been done on the porting, the look and feel just
> does not fit with the rest of the system. To
> make a *nix application fit in with the look and
> feel of the system would require a substantial
> amount of modification to the code, sometimes
> enough that it would be easier to just start
> from scratch.
It depends on how separate the user interface is from the rest of the code. If the user interface is well separated, you can just toss that, write a new one in Cocoa, and keep the behind the scenes code. If the program has no graphical user interface, such as say MySQL (an open source back end database program), you can do a fairly straight port.
In this case they are talking about adding the ability to script iTunes with the Perl language the same as you would with AppleScript. No look and feel is involved, and if you don't know Perl you probably wouldn't be using it.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
caluml wrote:
:)
> The Microsoft Emergency Armed Lawyer Response
> team are donning their black face masks now, and
> are climbing into unusually quiet helicopters....
>
> They know where you live, you know..
ComTech Officer Miller strides up to the command chair where Mr. Gates is sitting...
Miller: "Supreme Commander, Sir!" (salutes smartly)
Gates: "Yes, Miller. What is it?"
Miller: "Another MEALR team, sir. It got..."
Gates: "Nuked? Again?"
Miller: "Yes, sir. It was Godzilla."
Gates: "Damn that kaiju! Miller, from now on, let's not waste MEALR teams on OS X programmers.
Godzilla seems very protective of them for some reason."
Miller: "Yes, sir!"
TV news reporter: "This is Sandra Hughes for Channel 4 News. According to the latest reports from the GPN,
Godzilla is heading for Redmond, Washington..."
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)