A flawed comparison, as the benefits from a monoculture comes from the interoperability you can achieve much quicker than get a group of individuals agree on a common standard. After all, it's the same company building all apps. There are obvious disadvantages with this too, but the website comparison is flawed because usually, you don't try to make websites interoperable. On the other hand, that you can in the same software development product write software in the same language for anything between Smartphones to PDA's to desktop applications to web services (where the web service is specifically designed to work best with their own technologies), well, that's definitely a breeding ground for market adoption once you've reached critical mass.
With a closed source software, I'm surprised you don't care for the security patches only one company will be able to reliably provide. Sure, it's a dirty marketing practice to stop providing fixes to security holes in "old" operating systems by Microsoft, but I think unless you're using it in a very special locked down environment without internet access, it's time to go for either Linux or something else if not only to not have an OS that is decaying in security to use.
What a load of crap. OEM is meant to be "Original Equipment Manufacturer", not "toss in a $2 mouse and you get a discount". He might have built his system, doesn't make him a manufacturer.
Maybe so, but that's not how it works in reality anyway. You really can just buy a mouse and get away with it, even in high profile stores. According to MS, it's pretty much up to the stores how strongly they enforce it.
Yes, I think the first major problem from Google's services won't come from a scandal in how Google use their information, but rather from an exploit. However, it could be an idea to try protect Google from themselves, because can we otherwise be sure they'll sanitize themselves and build their infrastructure in a way that databases aren't cross-ran too much?
I think that curve is time delayed compared to if Apple is a good company or not, and perhaps related to if RMS is just an overzealous nutcase or simply great for the OSS community. So, the short answer is -- there's too many unknown factors to know this at this point.
Also its my understanding that these equations assume that the black hole is not feeding and gaining mass.
Yeah, a "dormant" black hole can be practically invisible and very hard to detect on their own, and then they use to need to make more assumptions from the surrounding environment. Often they use a combination. Sagittarius A* is currently assumed to be ("the"?) supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way and is observed through radio emissions and nearby rotating stars alike. Hawking radiation is nothing in visual comparison really, and I doubt it can even be used today to detect black holes with alone. The concept of Hawking radiation is even still controversial.
Btw, as usual with Vista and mysterious problems only involved in a few cases, I blame misbehaving drivers. I mean, I've not seen this happen myself so it's not a general problem with Vista + QT. Not that I know what a driver might do to take down the OS. Especially as Vista has auto-recovering features if e.g. the video driver would crash. (and I've seen it in action too especially with nVidias-not-betas-that-really-are:-p)
Maybe this has to do with the added layer of complexity (presumably for DRM) between the kernel and video-utilizing programs... or is that just for DirectX programs?
Only DRM'ed videos on Vista make use of the protected video path.
Yes, you're right, but for respectable gaming, you must have Windows Vista for the DirectX 10 and a SLI'd GeForce 8800GTX with drives that Lucifer himself designed!
Surely they want to make a revenue, so this probably cost them more to publish than the revenue they make from it nowadays. And then it doesn't matter for them if they lose a fraction of their user base, as harsh as it may sound.
What has standard compliance to do with working with Firefox? Firefox supports non-standard compliant sites, as do all other major browsers. Actually, non-standard compliance is the norm.
There are also laws being enacted in certain countries to force the bad guy to give up passwords/ keys etc (ie we are going to lock you up until you give it to use so you may as well do it now...).
Wow...
Well, good some encryption tools implement plausible deniability then.
Yes, and on that topic, any suggested non-US radio sites?:-)
I saw Lounge Radio above that I will no doubt check out soon, but I'm really at a loss here as I've been so attached to Radio Paradise and in some extent SomaFM before.:-(
Microsoft has been hamstrung by their commitment to backwards compatibility; I am convinced that (and bad management) are the reasons for Vista's mediocrity. Yeah, some stuff broke, but I wish they'd broken more in the pursuit of a "good" OS.
The sad part of this story was that the pursuit of a better OS was scrapped. Longhorn was more than a mere codename; it was a radically different vision than what Vista ended up as. I can only imagine the frustration at Microsoft as they had to make that decision. They lost more than WinFS in the process, that's for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
A flawed comparison, as the benefits from a monoculture comes from the interoperability you can achieve much quicker than get a group of individuals agree on a common standard. After all, it's the same company building all apps. There are obvious disadvantages with this too, but the website comparison is flawed because usually, you don't try to make websites interoperable. On the other hand, that you can in the same software development product write software in the same language for anything between Smartphones to PDA's to desktop applications to web services (where the web service is specifically designed to work best with their own technologies), well, that's definitely a breeding ground for market adoption once you've reached critical mass.
Oh wait, I guess it took them 2 years to learn how to write a letter.
With a closed source software, I'm surprised you don't care for the security patches only one company will be able to reliably provide. Sure, it's a dirty marketing practice to stop providing fixes to security holes in "old" operating systems by Microsoft, but I think unless you're using it in a very special locked down environment without internet access, it's time to go for either Linux or something else if not only to not have an OS that is decaying in security to use.
It's what people who had Windows 2000 said, and a heck of a lot of them stayed with Win2k.
;-)
Until they switched to XP, of course.
What a load of crap. OEM is meant to be "Original Equipment Manufacturer", not "toss in a $2 mouse and you get a discount". He might have built his system, doesn't make him a manufacturer.
Maybe so, but that's not how it works in reality anyway. You really can just buy a mouse and get away with it, even in high profile stores. According to MS, it's pretty much up to the stores how strongly they enforce it.
and the nightmare of DRM
:-/
If you dislike Vista's DRM features, why do you use DRM protected material?
Or aren't you? But then it's on the other hand not a problem.
... and Star Trek is? Wow, for a second I thought it was science fiction!
Yes, I think the first major problem from Google's services won't come from a scandal in how Google use their information, but rather from an exploit. However, it could be an idea to try protect Google from themselves, because can we otherwise be sure they'll sanitize themselves and build their infrastructure in a way that databases aren't cross-ran too much?
Is Google good or bad at Slashdot these days?
I think that curve is time delayed compared to if Apple is a good company or not, and perhaps related to if RMS is just an overzealous nutcase or simply great for the OSS community. So, the short answer is -- there's too many unknown factors to know this at this point.
Also its my understanding that these equations assume that the black hole is not feeding and gaining mass.
Yeah, a "dormant" black hole can be practically invisible and very hard to detect on their own, and then they use to need to make more assumptions from the surrounding environment. Often they use a combination. Sagittarius A* is currently assumed to be ("the"?) supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way and is observed through radio emissions and nearby rotating stars alike. Hawking radiation is nothing in visual comparison really, and I doubt it can even be used today to detect black holes with alone. The concept of Hawking radiation is even still controversial.
I agree, and it seems the mods have still not woken up here. :-(
The light we indirectly detect black holes from is thanks to superaccelerated matter near their Schwarzschild radius.
Btw, as usual with Vista and mysterious problems only involved in a few cases, I blame misbehaving drivers. I mean, I've not seen this happen myself so it's not a general problem with Vista + QT. Not that I know what a driver might do to take down the OS. Especially as Vista has auto-recovering features if e.g. the video driver would crash. (and I've seen it in action too especially with nVidias-not-betas-that-really-are :-p)
Maybe this has to do with the added layer of complexity (presumably for DRM) between the kernel and video-utilizing programs... or is that just for DirectX programs?
Only DRM'ed videos on Vista make use of the protected video path.
Yes, you're right, but for respectable gaming, you must have Windows Vista for the DirectX 10 and a SLI'd GeForce 8800GTX with drives that Lucifer himself designed!
"The Gigahertz Race is Back On"
No, I don't think so. It's just that AMD pushed the clock frequency for this CPU, but that works becuase it was just up to 3 GHz.
Watch me be right when they don't continue to push that generation to clock speeds 3x higher or so like they could in the past.
Surely they want to make a revenue, so this probably cost them more to publish than the revenue they make from it nowadays.
And then it doesn't matter for them if they lose a fraction of their user base, as harsh as it may sound.
What has standard compliance to do with working with Firefox? Firefox supports non-standard compliant sites, as do all other major browsers. Actually, non-standard compliance is the norm.
Tsk, tsk, Linux users these days...
I type OpenOffice.org Writer XML in VI... In the format's ZIP-compressed form!
So... they're not thieves, just as unoriginal aesthetically as the other major players.
:-s
Yes, because games sharing the textures for some of their lamps are then all junk.
Give me aesthetically innovative lamp textures, goddammit!
There are also laws being enacted in certain countries to force the bad guy to give up passwords/ keys etc (ie we are going to lock you up until you give it to use so you may as well do it now...).
Wow...
Well, good some encryption tools implement plausible deniability then.
Ahh, I see the book link now and can't blame you anymore. :-)
??
The number of the beast is 666, not 6.
Yes, and on that topic, any suggested non-US radio sites? :-)
:-(
I saw Lounge Radio above that I will no doubt check out soon, but I'm really at a loss here as I've been so attached to Radio Paradise and in some extent SomaFM before.
Microsoft has been hamstrung by their commitment to backwards compatibility; I am convinced that (and bad management) are the reasons for Vista's mediocrity. Yeah, some stuff broke, but I wish they'd broken more in the pursuit of a "good" OS.
The sad part of this story was that the pursuit of a better OS was scrapped. Longhorn was more than a mere codename; it was a radically different vision than what Vista ended up as. I can only imagine the frustration at Microsoft as they had to make that decision. They lost more than WinFS in the process, that's for sure.
1. 103" HDTV Plasma: $90,000
2. Ferrari car: $1,000,000
3. Watching aftermath from a too frantic Wii car game: Priceless.