That is not a flaw in open source software. It is a flaw in the assumption that all software can be replaced by open source written by unpaid volunteers. A lot of large open source projects are written by developers writing the software as part of their work: Open Office has lots of developers from Sun, Mozilla has tons of Netscape employees (and others), Evolution is developed primarily by Ximian employees, Wine has gotten contributions from Transgaming, Codeweavers, Corel and more.
I don't see the problem. If the closing tag is missing and you are using a Sax parser the only effect is one more scope indicator, and the parser will plod along happily until you try to close the surrounding tag at which point it will know right away that it should give an error.
Whether it will allow you to try to recover or not at that stage would be up to the parser.
Recovering from malformed input is regardless a difficult task, and typically you don't want to go there - that's not a parsing issue, but an issue of trying to predict how an error should be recovered.
For a DOM parser, the parser would do the same thing, and just fail and free the tree once it found the surrounding tag (or the end of the file). However using a DOM parser with a scenario like the one you suggested would be plain stupid.
In either case, handling a missing closing tag is trivial with XML, and I certainly can't see any justification for the claim that you'd either need unlimited memory or unlimited time based on that
Anyway, you've just given an example of a case where ANY grammar based on nested blocks will have to have thought put into it when it is fed bad data, with no justification for why it should make XML bad from a parsing standpoint.
Sorry to break your illusions, but the official system of measurement in the US is the metric system.
The US switched to the metric system as the underpinning of all measurement in 1866 (though AFAIK the only practical result is that the imperial units are defined by their metric counterparts), and in 1875 US was an original signatory to the International Treaty of the Meter.
Then i 1975 congress approved the Metric Conversion Act, intended to speed the application of the metric system in commerce and everyday use. See the Metric Program at NIST for more info.
No, in the sense that there is a publicly available XSL stylesheet that will do the conversion for you. XDR was a stopgap thing for Microsoft to get schema support out the door before the XML schema spec was finished.
Can you elaborate? I can't see what part of parsing XML you are referring to - parsing XML for the most part seems relatively simple, though I haven't written a complete XML parser or spent the time to read through the complete specification.
Why won't they be able to compete with the legal operations? They have the product sources. They have the labs to produce. They have distribution channels . They have massive amounts of weapons and people willing to use them to intimidate resellers into taking their stock.
What makes you believe that anyone trying to compete will not face threats of violence to allow the established drug cartels to keep their position?
And contrary to a completely legit business, they are unlikely to bother too much about paying tax...
The primary difference is that they might be forced to drop prices quite a lot, but their costs would drop dramatically as well - the risks they would be facing in producing and shipping their drugs would be far smaller.
Assuming that ruthless people that are ready to kill will just give up if their line of trade
become legal as opposed to finding other ways of pushing their margins is naive at best.
Why do you believe the crime syndicates would go away? Did the crime syndicates go away when prohibition was dropped? No, they found other ways to make their money, many of them illegal. Organizations making billions don't just shut down if a source of revenue dry up - they use their resources to find other revenue.
For someone with a large smuggling operation going, smuggling counterfeit pharmaseuticals would be a logical switch, or smuggling weapons.
We DO have the history, though perhaps not in that
article. Most of the major facts of the case or not disputed by neither ICANN or Auerbach - they have both specifically filed briefs where they admit to most of each others claims regarding what happened.
The point is that Auerbach by California law as a director does not have to ask the board, nor any committees of the board for access to the companies files. He needs to tell the staff of the company that he intends to inspect the companys offices and books.
By California law, the company is required to allow him to do that - he has an absolute right to do so.
In other words, the Audit Committe (which IS a subset of the board) or the full board itself, does not have the authority to deny him the request.
ICANN is trying to interpret "absolute rights" as "... as long as he accepts our restrictions". As soon as there are any restrictions, the rights can hardly be said to be absolute any more.
Since they are on shaky grounds, they have been trying to make Auberbach look as someone who would break the law and publish confidential material to hurt the company, and decided that they better preempt that - Ignoring that if Auerbach did something stupid like that, he might be facing criminal charges for violating his duties as a director, and so he already has a pretty clear reason not to.
The point is that he is not supposed to have to go through that route, as California law give a director an "absolute right" to access the material he has asked for - if the Audit Committee ever denies a request from a director, they are violating California law, so it would seem that this procedure is only there to make it harder for directors to excercize their rights (and duties).
One has nothing to do with the other. Competence in IT means the ability to build good products (in this case, software).
Competence in any industry is the ability to sell products. Nothing else matters to a publicly listed company, or they are not honoring their responsibilities to the shareholders.
Not quite true. Ever heard of FUD?
Microsoft doesn't use FUD to set standards. They use FUD primarily to cause uncertainty in the market place, not to set standards. Uncertainty help them sell products, sure. But it's only a small part of their arsenal to maintain their monopoly position.
Microsoft does not and will not ever sell Internet Explorer. To do so would be idiotic. Internet Explorer is Microsoft's Trojan Horse into the web-services, online vertical markets.
My point exactly: Microsoft are ready to spend millions on a loss leader to break into a market,
and maintain that loss leader over an extended period of time.
As I said above, they will soon give the OS away for free. They are moving their whole business away from shrinkwrap software. Which is great! Their software sucked anyway.
We seem to mostly agree on Microsofts strategy here. Microsoft is ready to take tremendous losses in order to expand the parts of their business that they see the most future income in, and you
may be right that their OS will be one of the areas they'll soon see as a good loss leader.
I disagree. I believe Microsoft are positioning themselves to take the online gaming market. First they get lots of X-Boxes out there. That creates a platform. Once there is a platform to sell to, game developers build games for it. It is actually easier to sell games on the platform with the least games available, as long as it's a good game.
You say you disagree, but then you reinforce my point: Microsoft don't care if they lose money on the XBox. The gaming console market isn't at stake. If Microsoft keeps losing money on the XBox (as in the hardware platform) it doesn't matter, because that's not where they'll be making their money. But I also think that they're not particularly concerned about the XBox platform at the moment. It's a trial run for them in many ways. It allows them to get customer feedback and test the market. The time to start getting concerned is if they release a new version and start pumping larger amounts of money into it.
(For instance to corner the online gaming market).
And once you have totally taken that market, you can start earning a profit on the box again.
That's a good point, and one of the reasons why it's important to ensure that Microsoft don't get a monopoly in this market too. People may think it's safe to bet on what they see as a likely winner, but they'll likely lose more if there is one winner that ends up dominating the market.
While this is true, it won't happen. The lowest they would sell the box at is cost. They cannot go below break-even. Why? Because it is vitally important for Microsoft to keep their stock price going up. Their recent tiff with the SEC shows how paranoid they were about earnings reports. They do this for three reasons.
You are wrong. They are already selling the box far below cost. Reportedly they are losing as much as 150 USD per XBox sold, some think it may be even more.
But you are also right, it is critical for Microsoft to keep their share price going up.
However they haven't managed that for a long time. So far they've been able to blame the market, but if they fail to rise dramatically when the market starts recovering they'll be in deep trouble.
Yeah, I'm sure Sony are quaking in their boots.
They'd be stupid if they aren't quaking in their boots at the thought of going up against a company with way more cash, a dramatic hold on large parts of the IT industry and the highest market cap in the world.
One customumer alone can't change things, so *NO* there isn't a greater chance.
"One voter alone can't change things, so there's no point in voting - not voting won't change anything"
would be another version of what you're saying.
You just spread FUD, which does translate into:"Don't buy from Microsoft competitors. Their products are doomed, you will end up with an unsupported product. Buy an XBox, it will stay around forever."
I'm starting to seriously wonder about your capability to parse and understand English. What I've said is: Don't buy from Microsoft. If you do buy from Microsoft you'll end up with abridged liberties and reduced personal choice, because in that case Microsoft will succeed.
If you absolutely want to interpret that as the complete opposite, then feel free to do so, but don't claim that's what I'm saying. If you want to capitulate to Microsoft, fine, but don't complain when people are trying to reduce their influence.
I know damn well what you *WANT* to say. You want to say "let's start a collective effort to mantain competition". Sorry to tell you, but collective efforts just don't work, everybody will do what is good for himself, not what is good for the collective. By claiming that such a collective effort is needed you imply that without it, the products are doomed -> don't buy competitor's products.
You don't know anything about what I want to say. Apparently you don't even understand what I do say. I have not said anything any collective effort to maintain competition. What I've said is that it is important to make people aware of the consequences of buying Microsoft products: They will reduce competition, they will reduce their personal freedoms, they will reduce choice.
Tell people the truth, that XBox is losing them billions, that it will never make money for Microsoft and that it's likely that it will be dropped without warning and they will be left out in the cold without any support just like the poor souls who bought in Windows/Alpha and Hailstorm.
What you do, is hype up XBox. I say it again: PEOPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT MORALS. They will buy the winning product. Period. If you make them believe that XBox will win, they will buy XBox.
I have not said that XBox will win. If you believe that is what I've said, you either can't read, or want to misinterpret what I'm saying.
What I've said is that if Microsoft cared about XBox, and wanted to put all its weigth behind it, then they would have no problems crushing the console market, and making XBox win. First of all there's no basis for interpreting that as a good thing for XBox buyers, as it would give Microsoft the power to increase prices on games.
However there's also no evidence that Microsoft see XBox as important enough for this. Where are their billion dollar ad campaigns? Why aren't they cutting prices dramatically? Why aren't they buying game publishers and making them cut PS2 and Nintendo games? Answer: XBox isn't important to them.
So yes, I agree with you, XBox will likely not be a big success. I doubt Microsoft will leave it behind, and I think that long term it might even be profitable for them. But the REASON I believe it won't be a big success is because (as I've pointed out many times already), they don't particularly care. XBox is a test for them. A way of learning how the game console market works.
For game console users, the time to get worried now, but whenever Microsoft starts feeling confident that they know how to push into the market in the cheapest way possible.
Funny, actually I've speaken to MSFT-shareholders and they have come up with exactly the same arguments like you: That MSFT is sooo strong, that they can push around competition and that they know what they are doing. Yes, MSFT is proud of being able to bully other companies.
However my argument is a completely different one:
Microsoft is strong enough to own the game console markets if they want to. So why don't they? Because they DON'T want to at the moment. They can do it, but they're not stupid - they won't do it unless they know they'll make money of it, otherwise what would the point be?
So while MSFT shareholders may delude themselves into thinking that Microsoft will pour enough money into XBox to make it control the market, I'm saying that the fact that Microsoft clearly aren't pouring enough money into XBox to make it control the market shows that they don't see XBox as important enough to spend that kind of money at.
At least not now.
The lessons is: Never fear Microsofts first attempt at anything. Like Windows 1.0 or Hailstorm, their first iterations are ways of testing the market, of learning what to spend the big bucks on. But you should be concerned once they try again.
They can't bully OEMs in consoles, how should that work?
Thretening to give extremely favorable treatment to competitors of companies to cooperate with Sony or Nintenty would do nicely... How do you think Microsoft managed to get OEMs to buy into per-CPU licensing of Windows in the early 90's?
All revolutions had a positive goal, like "We will win, we can make it, we will change it for the better", not "the dictator will win anyway, and a lot of us will die for nothing."
All revolutions had a positive goal set on a backdrop of the serious consequence of not winning: "If we don't win, we'll keep getting arrested, killed or tortured by the regime".
That is a much more accurate analogy to what I'm saying. I'm not saying Microsoft will win long term. I'm saying if we don't fight, Microsoft will win by default and we'll all suffer for it.
Revolutions were won by LEADERS and not whiners.
They are won by people who see that the alternative to accepting the status quo is to fight, and not pretend that the problem is smaller than it is.
If you want to help Linux, tell people about Linux-success-stories, not about Microsoft success-stories.
So instead of telling people that Microsoft is a threat, I should tell them that ooh, Linux is making such great progress? The end result of that is making people complacent, instead of fighting back. I love using Linux - I've been using it daily since 1994. I've never had a Microsoft OS installed on any machines I own or use on a daily basis.
But I'm not naive enough to believe that Microsoft isn't a threat that needs to be countered. You don't win a war by pretending the enemy isn't particularly dangerous to avoid scaring people.
But, yes, your talk like "Microsoft has soooooo much money in the bank, they are sooo powerful, competing against MSFT is soo hard" and your refusal to accept any Microsoft-failure does lead to capitulation.
No, I talk like Microsoft is a serious threat to free competition, so they need to be fought, not ignored. And their 30 billion USD in the bank DOES make them a serious threat.
Of course it doesn't stop anything. But it would be a way to push adoptation without making it too painful for the users - if they make it too painful for the users, they won't accept it. At the same time, if they make it painful for people not to adopt it, many will. They can do that by ensuring that major internet sites that don't adopt it for instance will be met with a deluge of complaints from users.
They have the DOS/Windows-domination that gets them bilions of $ per year. It's natural that you become lazy, incompetent and ignorant when you get so much money "automatically". In the 70's and early 80's they were not like that, but right now, they are.
Windows isn't Microsofts main income stream. Microsofts revenue base is getting very diverse, but their largest single revenue stream is from Office, not Windows. Even if Microsofts stopped getting a single cent per Windows installation tomorrow they would still make a profit.
You are funny. You really think that anybody believes that MS is looking for their interests. People are not that dumb. Get off your high horse.
I don't believe that anybody believe that, I know that a lot of people believe that. Stop being naive, and read up on brand recognition and attitudes towards Microsoft - they are one of the most popular companies in the US, and has a huge following of consumers that see Microsoft as a company that is the embodiment of the American dream. That you and I don't like them won't change that fact.
That depends on what freedom. If it's freedom to choose competition, it's the best marketing Microsoft can get. People like choosing from multiple vendors, yes, but they don't like being left in the cold with an unsupported product. So when you convince somebody that product xy will monopolize the market, it's a *PRO* argument to buy it. Even if the customer would like competition. (It's a prisoner's dilemma)
I agree that if you convince somebody that it's choose Microsoft, or lose out, then yes that is good for Microsoft. However what I am saying is
completely different. What I am saying is that if you choose Microsoft you will lose choice and you will lose personal freedoms and you will lose privacy, and that if you don't choose Microsoft
you will help ensure that they are unable to pull this off.
I'm not saying "it won't be a problem when you use it", I'm saying "it will be irrelevant and not become a standard". Big difference.
You are still pretending that people don't have to worry about it, and people should - it will fail if people worry about it and dislike it enough to actively choose not to support it. If people don't care, then Microsoft WILL get the market penetration they need for this, because they'll be
able to put it in every single version of Windows that goes out to consumers.
But it will be the first one visible by the public. All other failures are usually known only by IT-experts, but XBox will be a failure EVERYBODY will know about.
What makes you believe that? How will it be a highly visible failure compared to all their other failures? If there's one thing all their other failures should have taught you, is that nobody cares as long as Microsoft keeps being one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Translation: Don't buy from Microsoft competitors. Their products are doomed, you will end up with an unsupported product. Buy an XBox, it will stay around forever.
No. Translation: If you really believe that Microsoft care enough about XBox to want to own the console market that they are willing to spend billions on it, then they will own it, however the
comparatively small amount they are spending on it indicates that they don't currently see it as a big focus, so you have no reason to not buy from competitors yet. However, if Microsoft does reasonably well now, they WILL be willing to pour more money in XBox or its descendants in the future. In other words: If you actively oppose Microsoft now, by choosing a competitor instead,
there's a greater chance that you will still have a choice in five years time.
You did it again. You might hate Microsoft, but Microsoft loves people like you because of the FUD you spread about non-Microsoft products. Ever heard of self-fullfilling prophecy?
You obviously still don't understand what I am saying (or you don't understand what a self-fullfilling prophecy is), or you would have realized that this is the opposite of a self-fullfilling prophecy. If I had been saying that Microsoft is doomed to win, so lets all just forget about their competitors, then that would have been a self fullfilling prophecy. However what I'm saying is that to ensure that Microsoft lose, you must fight them every step of the way,
because the consequences you'll suffer if you allow them to win will be bad for all of us.
You know what FUD is, right?
Fear about no more games, Uncertainity about the platform being available, Doubt about the company being able to compete with the allmighty Microsoft empire. People give shit about morals. They don't care about the point you are trying to make, they only see the FUD you spread about non-MS products.
I don't spread FUD about non-MS products. However neither do I try to convince people that if they just pretend that MS isn't a threat they'll go away. Face reality and stop being so naive: The IT industry is in the sorry state it is exactly because so many companies believed that Microsoft wouldn't be a threat to them.
The number of companies that have been driven out of business because they thought that THEY would be able to compete with Microsoft just because their product is better is staggering. You don't fight Microsoft just with a better product, you need to counter their marketing, counter their FUD, counter their illegal monopolistic activities, fight them in court and in general fight them on all fronts.
Fact remains that
- They can't give away XBox because it's hardware.
Since when did it become impossible to give hardware away? Funny, I've received hardware for free as part of promotions more than once in the past (though nothing as expensive as a games console, granted).
If Microsoft thought it worth the money, of course they could. Besides, they could give it away with the purchase of X number of games, say 2-3, thereby instantly offsetting part of their loss.
There are two reasons why they aren't currently doing this: 1) They don't want to commit that kind of money, because XBox isn't that important to them at this stage. 2) People who are willing to pay are likely more willing to pay for games, thus
they are much more likely to make money on these people in the long term.
- Even if it were available for free, people would still prefer the PS2 because it has more, cheaper and better games
Some people would prefer the PS2, sure. However who cares about the hardcore gamers, if millions of people who never otherwise would have bothered to get any game console suddenly get an XBox? Game publishers care almost exclusively about volume. Thats why the PS2 is currently better served. If Microsoft changed that, then the game situation would change quickly.
Besides, if Microsoft were ready to really push XBox, what would a few billion to buy a few of the major game publishers and can PS2 and Gamecube ports be to them?
- The PS3 is coming and will take away the only thing going for the XBox (technical advances in the 2 years it came out after the PS2). And MS can't release a new console every 2 years because that would piss off customers even more. So when the PS3 comes and XBox hasn't reached more marketshare than PS2, the game is over.
You only demonstrate that you don't know the console market. No company has managed to maintain dominance for extended periods of time - dominance has shifted back and forth between multiple players so many time it's getting ridiculous. But if anyone knows how to milk customers through expensive upgrade cycles, it is Microsoft. After all, that is how they've managed to grow this big in the first place.
So, no, Microsoft can't destroy the console market. PS2 sales didn't even slow down during the XBox release and XBox is essentially dead in Japan (They will sell the 250000 units they wanted to sell in the first month in the first YEAR) and dying in Europe.
Your logic doesn't hold. You are saying that because XBox hasn't made much of an impact, Microsoft can't destry the console market, but you are blatantly ignoring what I said: That Microsoft don't care about the console market, because if they did they would have spent real money on it, and followed their usual tactics: Aquisitions, agressive price cuts on key products to establish a market hold, and bullying OEMs.
Microsoft makes more losses per unit than expected and sells less units than expected. XBox has failed against PS2 and PS2/3 is threatening the low-end Home Windows-PC.
So? Microsoft is still losing so little on XBox in total that they could sustain XBox indefinently AND ramp up investment in it just from interest payments on their cash holdings.
To sum up: Alerting people to the threat that Microsoft is is not providing marketing for Microsoft any more than claiming that saying people need to fight to overthrow a dictator
would be providing marketing for that dictator.
Do you seriously think that people shouldn't
fight out of fear for making people capitulate?
Because that is the most obviously self fulfilling prophecy of all.
LOL. Yeah, that's why I see Hailstorm-websites all over the web. And Bill Gates surely didn't say anything stupid when he claimed "Internet will never be popular [and will get killed by proprietary MSN]". Or look at XBox which is the most innefficient and expensive gaming system on the planet. Microsoft is the only one losing huge amounts of money, yet they are at last position compared to Gamecube and PS2.
Face it: Microsoft is probably the most incompetent company in IT. The only thing that gets them going is endless backwards-compatibility with their x86-desktop domination. (which dates back to 1981)
If Microsoft is the most incompetent company in IT, then how come they have 40 billion USD in the bank, and by market cap is still the largest company in the world?
They may not be doing stuff that you and I think is good, but calling a company that has managed to grow from nothing to the largest company in the world in the timespan Microsoft has "the most incompetent company in IT" is ridiculous.
Wrong, people should start discounting their ideas.
Microsoft marketing works like this:
"We will release product xy next year"
Then people LIKE YOU come around and scream "the sky is falling!", "Microsoft is evil", "boycott this product, it will destroy competition!"
And thanks to people LIKE ME, Microsoft doesn't always succeed with their most outrageous ideas, because people are made aware that Microsoft isn't looking out for their interests, but are trying their best to screw them.
Nobody likes to be a mayrtyr, people like you are Microsoft's greatest marketing asset. Actually they don't have to do much marketing, people like you do it for them.
That's bullshit. People telling consumers that what Microsoft does will infringe on their freedoms and take away their options is not good marketing for Microsoft. What is much better for Microsoft are people like you trying to discount the concerns by saying it won't be a problem. That
leave people open to believe Microsofts marketing, because they see no vocal opposition.
I'm very thankful for Microsoft releasing the XBox, because it will fail so badly that Microsoft will lose their standard-setting image. (Microsoft had many blunders in the past like Windows/Alpha, MS Bob, Hailstorm, etc. But XBox will be first the average customer will know about) In the post-XBox era, Microsoft will have to actually deliver something more than a press release to convince people of future standards.
As for XBox etc. Microsoft has had tons of mediocre performing products and services, and has sunk hundreds of millions into failed ventures before, including a series of dot-coms. Some of them were quite high profile failures. X-Box won't be the first, and unlikely the last.
Microsoft doesn't set standards by press release. Microsoft sets standards by buying out key players, by leveraging their monopoly situation (hence the findings of facts in the anti-trust trial, showing that they did break the law), by sinking millions or billions into marketing and sales of products that will never turn a profit (Internet Explorer, anyone?), or that will only
turn a profit after years of losses.
As much as I despise Microsoft, I think you're naive if you think Microsoft is incompetent, and I think you're naive if you think Microsoft will fail. They may end up losing their hegemony on OS front some day, but the OS is only a small share of their profits, and a decreasing one at that.
What you're seeing these days are Microsoft frantically trying their hand at everything they can to gain foothold in new niches: Mobile devices, PVRs, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, media companies, travel, trust services, transaction handling and more.
I don't think Microsoft particularly worry if they EVER make a profit on XBox. Regardless of whether they make a profit, it will strengthen their brand as a viable source of electronics devices or appliances, and may allow them easier entries into other, related markets - this is the kind of integration of products and marketing that Microsoft is best at (and much better at than they are at technical innovation).
Even so, I doubt XBox will flop if Microsoft really care about it. Microsoft make enough money to give the damn thing away for free, and still stay in the black. They can easily destroy the console market and crush both Sony and Nintendo in a price war if they see the game console market as important enough to justify it - 40 billion USD could cover quite an amount of free XBox units.
What is more likely though, is that XBox will do ok, but not magnificently well, and Microsoft won't sink too much in it, just as with WebTV and Ultimate TV, and they'll use it primarily as a learning experience, and wait for their major cash expenditure until a) they know the market, and b) they have weakened their opponents more by fear, uncertainty and doubt (by the very threat of a massive Microsoft war campain against their competitors).
Yes, you will get pissed of. But who will you complain to? If Microsoft does their homework, ordinary users will complain to the webmasters, not to them.
Perhaps going straight to a warning for all sites will be too tough. Start with a "This site is insecure" symbol in the status bar". Then warn all site owners about what will happen later. A large chunk will start looking at it - at the very least the people operating Windows web servers.
Now, if they then do introduce the warning, users will certainly notice that they don't appear for all sites, which will make it even more likely that they will complain to the webmaster (or just stop using the site), than to Microsoft.
That doesn't matter. The majority of websites are tested so that they work with IE. If IE changes to give a massive security warning whenever you connect to a non-Windows website, a lot of them WILL switch.
And if Windows starts blocking network connections to "insecure" (that is, non-Palladium enabled) websites, then most of them WILL switch, or disappear.
You don't get it. Of course they won't make new PCs refuse to run unauthenticated binaries right away. That would of course kill them.
The "safer" way for Microsoft, is to make their next version of Windows warn you whenever you try to do something "unsafe". Imagine if each time you connect to a webserver not running this security stuff, you get a window saying that you are connecting to an insecure site and that you should ask the site operator to upgrade to a secure system.
Then give users the option of blocking unsafe sites permanently.
Then after somewhere around 70-80% of all systems are "secure" they issue an upgrade that make your machine refuse to deal with unsafe data by default, hiding an option deep down in Windows to allow it. Possibly allowing you to "self authenticate" old applications.
After a while, you then make the authentication
mandatory.
This has the possibility of working, if they aren't met with solid opposition from the start,
and if they have the sense to do it gradually enough to not alienate too many people.
Keep in mind that Windows is based on obsoleting things. There's so much old software that stops working between versions of Windows, that that argument simply don't hold - your Windows software WILL become worthless sooner or later, but people still stick with it.
And as for switching to Linux, you might not have that option, as the entire point about Palladium
was that it is mean to be enforced in hardware via alliances with Intel and AMD (for now).
Microsoft may be evil, but they aren't stupid... People can't afford to take the risk of discounting their ideas.
They don't need to get all. They need to get many enough that they can issue a new version that refuse to talk to machines without this new "security" feature. If you suddenly find yourself unable to connect to, e-mail, retrieve web pages or exchange files with, say 70% or 80% of all machines out there, your computer would suddenly be quite a bit less useful.
Be very afraid of Microsoft.
But as I said, I don't think they'll succeed, exactly because enough people ARE afraid enough of Microsoft to fight things like this.
Well, if your new PC refused to run binaries that weren't authenticated, that would pretty much kill open source if the authentication process was difficult enough. But it would also never catch on.
Except that if you buy as little as a single game for it, Microsoft lose less than 150 USD. It won't take many games sold to you before Microsoft makes money on you.
Presumably the '?' was there because it is an open question whether he is our "favorite computer criminal", not whether or not he is a criminal.
(Note the "favorite" there).
You miss the point. This wasn't about which codec wins, but about whether or not it's a problem for open source whether or not open source OS's provide something first. Of course having something everyone else doesn't have is an advantage. But is it still an advantage after the difference is erased?
I claim that it usually isn't, since the typical consumer couldn't care less, and usually won't even know or remmber, who were first.
My example of the Sony Walkman is a valid one: How many consumers buy Sony Walkmans because they were first? Most consumers won't even know they were first, nor know that Walkman refers to a trademarked Sony product, not to the type of product itself. Same for Roller bladers vs. inline skates, and a number of other products.
The thing is, except for geeks, nobody cares whether or not open source OS's or Windows or MacOS or whatever had a codec first.
What matters to ordinary consumers is what is available now, today, when someone sends them a video clip and they want to watch it.
Yes, it would be beneficial for open source to lead the way in many ways. But is it critical? I'd say no. What is important is to support something as soon as it gains widespread usage, not as soon as it is available.
To comment on your claim that open source software isn't ever the one that breaks the mold, I'd say you are doubly wrong. First and foremost, open source software has broken the mold time and time again. If it hadn't been for most of the internet protocols implemented as open source, for instance, the evolution of the internet would have had to wait much longer to achieve a size large enough for commercial vendors to be interested.
That's your first error. The second is related: OSS can easily be first, because many OSS programmers are motivated by whats cool and interesting to work on, not what can or will pay of economically. So while a company needs to justify it's development expenses to its board and shareholders, OSS developers can get straight to work and develop a solution.
Yes, in the long run somebody could reimplement the ideas as proprietary software. But who cares? As much as I despise Microsoft, I'd think it was great if they supported Ogg in their products, for instance, as that would make it much more likely that Ogg would gain widespread use.
Most people don't care who was first. They care about whats going on now. They don't care if open source was first, second or hundreth with a good codec. They care whether there are good codecs available for their OS, whether open source or not.
They care whether they can play that new cool video clip that all their friends are talking about.
After all, how many people give a damn that Walkman is a Sony trademark, and stick to Sony because they were first?
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Open Source isn't only volunteer work.
Whether it will allow you to try to recover or not at that stage would be up to the parser.
Recovering from malformed input is regardless a difficult task, and typically you don't want to go there - that's not a parsing issue, but an issue of trying to predict how an error should be recovered.
For a DOM parser, the parser would do the same thing, and just fail and free the tree once it found the surrounding tag (or the end of the file). However using a DOM parser with a scenario like the one you suggested would be plain stupid.
In either case, handling a missing closing tag is trivial with XML, and I certainly can't see any justification for the claim that you'd either need unlimited memory or unlimited time based on that
Anyway, you've just given an example of a case where ANY grammar based on nested blocks will have to have thought put into it when it is fed bad data, with no justification for why it should make XML bad from a parsing standpoint.
Do you have a better example?
The US switched to the metric system as the underpinning of all measurement in 1866 (though AFAIK the only practical result is that the imperial units are defined by their metric counterparts), and in 1875 US was an original signatory to the International Treaty of the Meter.
Then i 1975 congress approved the Metric Conversion Act, intended to speed the application of the metric system in commerce and everyday use. See the Metric Program at NIST for more info.
No, in the sense that there is a publicly available XSL stylesheet that will do the conversion for you. XDR was a stopgap thing for Microsoft to get schema support out the door before the XML schema spec was finished.
Can you elaborate? I can't see what part of parsing XML you are referring to - parsing XML for the most part seems relatively simple, though I haven't written a complete XML parser or spent the time to read through the complete specification.
J.F.Consumer haven't even heard about Linux, much less that it's free. The amount of regular people that know about Linux is still low.
What makes you believe that anyone trying to compete will not face threats of violence to allow the established drug cartels to keep their position?
And contrary to a completely legit business, they are unlikely to bother too much about paying tax...
The primary difference is that they might be forced to drop prices quite a lot, but their costs would drop dramatically as well - the risks they would be facing in producing and shipping their drugs would be far smaller.
Assuming that ruthless people that are ready to kill will just give up if their line of trade become legal as opposed to finding other ways of pushing their margins is naive at best.
For someone with a large smuggling operation going, smuggling counterfeit pharmaseuticals would be a logical switch, or smuggling weapons.
The point is that Auerbach by California law as a director does not have to ask the board, nor any committees of the board for access to the companies files. He needs to tell the staff of the company that he intends to inspect the companys offices and books.
By California law, the company is required to allow him to do that - he has an absolute right to do so.
In other words, the Audit Committe (which IS a subset of the board) or the full board itself, does not have the authority to deny him the request.
ICANN is trying to interpret "absolute rights" as "... as long as he accepts our restrictions". As soon as there are any restrictions, the rights can hardly be said to be absolute any more.
Since they are on shaky grounds, they have been trying to make Auberbach look as someone who would break the law and publish confidential material to hurt the company, and decided that they better preempt that - Ignoring that if Auerbach did something stupid like that, he might be facing criminal charges for violating his duties as a director, and so he already has a pretty clear reason not to.
The point is that he is not supposed to have to go through that route, as California law give a director an "absolute right" to access the material he has asked for - if the Audit Committee ever denies a request from a director, they are violating California law, so it would seem that this procedure is only there to make it harder for directors to excercize their rights (and duties).
Competence in any industry is the ability to sell products. Nothing else matters to a publicly listed company, or they are not honoring their responsibilities to the shareholders.
Not quite true. Ever heard of FUD?
Microsoft doesn't use FUD to set standards. They use FUD primarily to cause uncertainty in the market place, not to set standards. Uncertainty help them sell products, sure. But it's only a small part of their arsenal to maintain their monopoly position.
Microsoft does not and will not ever sell Internet Explorer. To do so would be idiotic. Internet Explorer is Microsoft's Trojan Horse into the web-services, online vertical markets.
My point exactly: Microsoft are ready to spend millions on a loss leader to break into a market, and maintain that loss leader over an extended period of time.
As I said above, they will soon give the OS away for free. They are moving their whole business away from shrinkwrap software. Which is great! Their software sucked anyway.
We seem to mostly agree on Microsofts strategy here. Microsoft is ready to take tremendous losses in order to expand the parts of their business that they see the most future income in, and you may be right that their OS will be one of the areas they'll soon see as a good loss leader.
I disagree. I believe Microsoft are positioning themselves to take the online gaming market. First they get lots of X-Boxes out there. That creates a platform. Once there is a platform to sell to, game developers build games for it. It is actually easier to sell games on the platform with the least games available, as long as it's a good game.
You say you disagree, but then you reinforce my point: Microsoft don't care if they lose money on the XBox. The gaming console market isn't at stake. If Microsoft keeps losing money on the XBox (as in the hardware platform) it doesn't matter, because that's not where they'll be making their money. But I also think that they're not particularly concerned about the XBox platform at the moment. It's a trial run for them in many ways. It allows them to get customer feedback and test the market. The time to start getting concerned is if they release a new version and start pumping larger amounts of money into it. (For instance to corner the online gaming market).
And once you have totally taken that market, you can start earning a profit on the box again.
That's a good point, and one of the reasons why it's important to ensure that Microsoft don't get a monopoly in this market too. People may think it's safe to bet on what they see as a likely winner, but they'll likely lose more if there is one winner that ends up dominating the market.
While this is true, it won't happen. The lowest they would sell the box at is cost. They cannot go below break-even. Why? Because it is vitally important for Microsoft to keep their stock price going up. Their recent tiff with the SEC shows how paranoid they were about earnings reports. They do this for three reasons.
You are wrong. They are already selling the box far below cost. Reportedly they are losing as much as 150 USD per XBox sold, some think it may be even more.
But you are also right, it is critical for Microsoft to keep their share price going up.
However they haven't managed that for a long time. So far they've been able to blame the market, but if they fail to rise dramatically when the market starts recovering they'll be in deep trouble.
Yeah, I'm sure Sony are quaking in their boots.
They'd be stupid if they aren't quaking in their boots at the thought of going up against a company with way more cash, a dramatic hold on large parts of the IT industry and the highest market cap in the world.
"One voter alone can't change things, so there's no point in voting - not voting won't change anything" would be another version of what you're saying.
You just spread FUD, which does translate into:"Don't buy from Microsoft competitors. Their products are doomed, you will end up with an unsupported product. Buy an XBox, it will stay around forever."
I'm starting to seriously wonder about your capability to parse and understand English. What I've said is: Don't buy from Microsoft. If you do buy from Microsoft you'll end up with abridged liberties and reduced personal choice, because in that case Microsoft will succeed.
If you absolutely want to interpret that as the complete opposite, then feel free to do so, but don't claim that's what I'm saying. If you want to capitulate to Microsoft, fine, but don't complain when people are trying to reduce their influence.
I know damn well what you *WANT* to say. You want to say "let's start a collective effort to mantain competition". Sorry to tell you, but collective efforts just don't work, everybody will do what is good for himself, not what is good for the collective. By claiming that such a collective effort is needed you imply that without it, the products are doomed -> don't buy competitor's products.
You don't know anything about what I want to say. Apparently you don't even understand what I do say. I have not said anything any collective effort to maintain competition. What I've said is that it is important to make people aware of the consequences of buying Microsoft products: They will reduce competition, they will reduce their personal freedoms, they will reduce choice.
Tell people the truth, that XBox is losing them billions, that it will never make money for Microsoft and that it's likely that it will be dropped without warning and they will be left out in the cold without any support just like the poor souls who bought in Windows/Alpha and Hailstorm.
What you do, is hype up XBox. I say it again: PEOPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT MORALS. They will buy the winning product. Period. If you make them believe that XBox will win, they will buy XBox.
I have not said that XBox will win. If you believe that is what I've said, you either can't read, or want to misinterpret what I'm saying.
What I've said is that if Microsoft cared about XBox, and wanted to put all its weigth behind it, then they would have no problems crushing the console market, and making XBox win. First of all there's no basis for interpreting that as a good thing for XBox buyers, as it would give Microsoft the power to increase prices on games.
However there's also no evidence that Microsoft see XBox as important enough for this. Where are their billion dollar ad campaigns? Why aren't they cutting prices dramatically? Why aren't they buying game publishers and making them cut PS2 and Nintendo games? Answer: XBox isn't important to them.
So yes, I agree with you, XBox will likely not be a big success. I doubt Microsoft will leave it behind, and I think that long term it might even be profitable for them. But the REASON I believe it won't be a big success is because (as I've pointed out many times already), they don't particularly care. XBox is a test for them. A way of learning how the game console market works.
For game console users, the time to get worried now, but whenever Microsoft starts feeling confident that they know how to push into the market in the cheapest way possible.
Funny, actually I've speaken to MSFT-shareholders and they have come up with exactly the same arguments like you: That MSFT is sooo strong, that they can push around competition and that they know what they are doing. Yes, MSFT is proud of being able to bully other companies.
However my argument is a completely different one: Microsoft is strong enough to own the game console markets if they want to. So why don't they? Because they DON'T want to at the moment. They can do it, but they're not stupid - they won't do it unless they know they'll make money of it, otherwise what would the point be?
So while MSFT shareholders may delude themselves into thinking that Microsoft will pour enough money into XBox to make it control the market, I'm saying that the fact that Microsoft clearly aren't pouring enough money into XBox to make it control the market shows that they don't see XBox as important enough to spend that kind of money at. At least not now.
The lessons is: Never fear Microsofts first attempt at anything. Like Windows 1.0 or Hailstorm, their first iterations are ways of testing the market, of learning what to spend the big bucks on. But you should be concerned once they try again.
They can't bully OEMs in consoles, how should that work?
Thretening to give extremely favorable treatment to competitors of companies to cooperate with Sony or Nintenty would do nicely... How do you think Microsoft managed to get OEMs to buy into per-CPU licensing of Windows in the early 90's?
All revolutions had a positive goal, like "We will win, we can make it, we will change it for the better", not "the dictator will win anyway, and a lot of us will die for nothing."
All revolutions had a positive goal set on a backdrop of the serious consequence of not winning: "If we don't win, we'll keep getting arrested, killed or tortured by the regime". That is a much more accurate analogy to what I'm saying. I'm not saying Microsoft will win long term. I'm saying if we don't fight, Microsoft will win by default and we'll all suffer for it.
Revolutions were won by LEADERS and not whiners.
They are won by people who see that the alternative to accepting the status quo is to fight, and not pretend that the problem is smaller than it is.
If you want to help Linux, tell people about Linux-success-stories, not about Microsoft success-stories.
So instead of telling people that Microsoft is a threat, I should tell them that ooh, Linux is making such great progress? The end result of that is making people complacent, instead of fighting back. I love using Linux - I've been using it daily since 1994. I've never had a Microsoft OS installed on any machines I own or use on a daily basis.
But I'm not naive enough to believe that Microsoft isn't a threat that needs to be countered. You don't win a war by pretending the enemy isn't particularly dangerous to avoid scaring people.
But, yes, your talk like "Microsoft has soooooo much money in the bank, they are sooo powerful, competing against MSFT is soo hard" and your refusal to accept any Microsoft-failure does lead to capitulation.
No, I talk like Microsoft is a serious threat to free competition, so they need to be fought, not ignored. And their 30 billion USD in the bank DOES make them a serious threat.
And who will buy these machines if they can't communicate with any Windows desktops or servers, and can't run Windows?
Of course it doesn't stop anything. But it would be a way to push adoptation without making it too painful for the users - if they make it too painful for the users, they won't accept it. At the same time, if they make it painful for people not to adopt it, many will. They can do that by ensuring that major internet sites that don't adopt it for instance will be met with a deluge of complaints from users.
Windows isn't Microsofts main income stream. Microsofts revenue base is getting very diverse, but their largest single revenue stream is from Office, not Windows. Even if Microsofts stopped getting a single cent per Windows installation tomorrow they would still make a profit.
You are funny. You really think that anybody believes that MS is looking for their interests. People are not that dumb. Get off your high horse.
I don't believe that anybody believe that, I know that a lot of people believe that. Stop being naive, and read up on brand recognition and attitudes towards Microsoft - they are one of the most popular companies in the US, and has a huge following of consumers that see Microsoft as a company that is the embodiment of the American dream. That you and I don't like them won't change that fact.
That depends on what freedom. If it's freedom to choose competition, it's the best marketing Microsoft can get. People like choosing from multiple vendors, yes, but they don't like being left in the cold with an unsupported product. So when you convince somebody that product xy will monopolize the market, it's a *PRO* argument to buy it. Even if the customer would like competition. (It's a prisoner's dilemma)
I agree that if you convince somebody that it's choose Microsoft, or lose out, then yes that is good for Microsoft. However what I am saying is completely different. What I am saying is that if you choose Microsoft you will lose choice and you will lose personal freedoms and you will lose privacy, and that if you don't choose Microsoft you will help ensure that they are unable to pull this off.
I'm not saying "it won't be a problem when you use it", I'm saying "it will be irrelevant and not become a standard". Big difference.
You are still pretending that people don't have to worry about it, and people should - it will fail if people worry about it and dislike it enough to actively choose not to support it. If people don't care, then Microsoft WILL get the market penetration they need for this, because they'll be able to put it in every single version of Windows that goes out to consumers.
But it will be the first one visible by the public. All other failures are usually known only by IT-experts, but XBox will be a failure EVERYBODY will know about.
What makes you believe that? How will it be a highly visible failure compared to all their other failures? If there's one thing all their other failures should have taught you, is that nobody cares as long as Microsoft keeps being one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Translation: Don't buy from Microsoft competitors. Their products are doomed, you will end up with an unsupported product. Buy an XBox, it will stay around forever.
No. Translation: If you really believe that Microsoft care enough about XBox to want to own the console market that they are willing to spend billions on it, then they will own it, however the comparatively small amount they are spending on it indicates that they don't currently see it as a big focus, so you have no reason to not buy from competitors yet. However, if Microsoft does reasonably well now, they WILL be willing to pour more money in XBox or its descendants in the future. In other words: If you actively oppose Microsoft now, by choosing a competitor instead, there's a greater chance that you will still have a choice in five years time.
You did it again. You might hate Microsoft, but Microsoft loves people like you because of the FUD you spread about non-Microsoft products. Ever heard of self-fullfilling prophecy?
You obviously still don't understand what I am saying (or you don't understand what a self-fullfilling prophecy is), or you would have realized that this is the opposite of a self-fullfilling prophecy. If I had been saying that Microsoft is doomed to win, so lets all just forget about their competitors, then that would have been a self fullfilling prophecy. However what I'm saying is that to ensure that Microsoft lose, you must fight them every step of the way, because the consequences you'll suffer if you allow them to win will be bad for all of us. You know what FUD is, right? Fear about no more games, Uncertainity about the platform being available, Doubt about the company being able to compete with the allmighty Microsoft empire. People give shit about morals. They don't care about the point you are trying to make, they only see the FUD you spread about non-MS products.
I don't spread FUD about non-MS products. However neither do I try to convince people that if they just pretend that MS isn't a threat they'll go away. Face reality and stop being so naive: The IT industry is in the sorry state it is exactly because so many companies believed that Microsoft wouldn't be a threat to them.
The number of companies that have been driven out of business because they thought that THEY would be able to compete with Microsoft just because their product is better is staggering. You don't fight Microsoft just with a better product, you need to counter their marketing, counter their FUD, counter their illegal monopolistic activities, fight them in court and in general fight them on all fronts.
Fact remains that - They can't give away XBox because it's hardware.
Since when did it become impossible to give hardware away? Funny, I've received hardware for free as part of promotions more than once in the past (though nothing as expensive as a games console, granted).
If Microsoft thought it worth the money, of course they could. Besides, they could give it away with the purchase of X number of games, say 2-3, thereby instantly offsetting part of their loss.
There are two reasons why they aren't currently doing this: 1) They don't want to commit that kind of money, because XBox isn't that important to them at this stage. 2) People who are willing to pay are likely more willing to pay for games, thus they are much more likely to make money on these people in the long term.
- Even if it were available for free, people would still prefer the PS2 because it has more, cheaper and better games
Some people would prefer the PS2, sure. However who cares about the hardcore gamers, if millions of people who never otherwise would have bothered to get any game console suddenly get an XBox? Game publishers care almost exclusively about volume. Thats why the PS2 is currently better served. If Microsoft changed that, then the game situation would change quickly.
Besides, if Microsoft were ready to really push XBox, what would a few billion to buy a few of the major game publishers and can PS2 and Gamecube ports be to them?
- The PS3 is coming and will take away the only thing going for the XBox (technical advances in the 2 years it came out after the PS2). And MS can't release a new console every 2 years because that would piss off customers even more. So when the PS3 comes and XBox hasn't reached more marketshare than PS2, the game is over.
You only demonstrate that you don't know the console market. No company has managed to maintain dominance for extended periods of time - dominance has shifted back and forth between multiple players so many time it's getting ridiculous. But if anyone knows how to milk customers through expensive upgrade cycles, it is Microsoft. After all, that is how they've managed to grow this big in the first place.
So, no, Microsoft can't destroy the console market. PS2 sales didn't even slow down during the XBox release and XBox is essentially dead in Japan (They will sell the 250000 units they wanted to sell in the first month in the first YEAR) and dying in Europe.
Your logic doesn't hold. You are saying that because XBox hasn't made much of an impact, Microsoft can't destry the console market, but you are blatantly ignoring what I said: That Microsoft don't care about the console market, because if they did they would have spent real money on it, and followed their usual tactics: Aquisitions, agressive price cuts on key products to establish a market hold, and bullying OEMs.
Microsoft makes more losses per unit than expected and sells less units than expected. XBox has failed against PS2 and PS2/3 is threatening the low-end Home Windows-PC.
So? Microsoft is still losing so little on XBox in total that they could sustain XBox indefinently AND ramp up investment in it just from interest payments on their cash holdings.
To sum up: Alerting people to the threat that Microsoft is is not providing marketing for Microsoft any more than claiming that saying people need to fight to overthrow a dictator would be providing marketing for that dictator.
Do you seriously think that people shouldn't fight out of fear for making people capitulate? Because that is the most obviously self fulfilling prophecy of all.
Face it: Microsoft is probably the most incompetent company in IT. The only thing that gets them going is endless backwards-compatibility with their x86-desktop domination. (which dates back to 1981)
If Microsoft is the most incompetent company in IT, then how come they have 40 billion USD in the bank, and by market cap is still the largest company in the world?
They may not be doing stuff that you and I think is good, but calling a company that has managed to grow from nothing to the largest company in the world in the timespan Microsoft has "the most incompetent company in IT" is ridiculous.
Wrong, people should start discounting their ideas.
Microsoft marketing works like this:
"We will release product xy next year"
Then people LIKE YOU come around and scream "the sky is falling!", "Microsoft is evil", "boycott this product, it will destroy competition!"
And thanks to people LIKE ME, Microsoft doesn't always succeed with their most outrageous ideas, because people are made aware that Microsoft isn't looking out for their interests, but are trying their best to screw them.
Nobody likes to be a mayrtyr, people like you are Microsoft's greatest marketing asset. Actually they don't have to do much marketing, people like you do it for them.
That's bullshit. People telling consumers that what Microsoft does will infringe on their freedoms and take away their options is not good marketing for Microsoft. What is much better for Microsoft are people like you trying to discount the concerns by saying it won't be a problem. That leave people open to believe Microsofts marketing, because they see no vocal opposition.
I'm very thankful for Microsoft releasing the XBox, because it will fail so badly that Microsoft will lose their standard-setting image. (Microsoft had many blunders in the past like Windows/Alpha, MS Bob, Hailstorm, etc. But XBox will be first the average customer will know about) In the post-XBox era, Microsoft will have to actually deliver something more than a press release to convince people of future standards.
As for XBox etc. Microsoft has had tons of mediocre performing products and services, and has sunk hundreds of millions into failed ventures before, including a series of dot-coms. Some of them were quite high profile failures. X-Box won't be the first, and unlikely the last.
Microsoft doesn't set standards by press release. Microsoft sets standards by buying out key players, by leveraging their monopoly situation (hence the findings of facts in the anti-trust trial, showing that they did break the law), by sinking millions or billions into marketing and sales of products that will never turn a profit (Internet Explorer, anyone?), or that will only turn a profit after years of losses.
As much as I despise Microsoft, I think you're naive if you think Microsoft is incompetent, and I think you're naive if you think Microsoft will fail. They may end up losing their hegemony on OS front some day, but the OS is only a small share of their profits, and a decreasing one at that.
What you're seeing these days are Microsoft frantically trying their hand at everything they can to gain foothold in new niches: Mobile devices, PVRs, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, media companies, travel, trust services, transaction handling and more.
I don't think Microsoft particularly worry if they EVER make a profit on XBox. Regardless of whether they make a profit, it will strengthen their brand as a viable source of electronics devices or appliances, and may allow them easier entries into other, related markets - this is the kind of integration of products and marketing that Microsoft is best at (and much better at than they are at technical innovation).
Even so, I doubt XBox will flop if Microsoft really care about it. Microsoft make enough money to give the damn thing away for free, and still stay in the black. They can easily destroy the console market and crush both Sony and Nintendo in a price war if they see the game console market as important enough to justify it - 40 billion USD could cover quite an amount of free XBox units.
What is more likely though, is that XBox will do ok, but not magnificently well, and Microsoft won't sink too much in it, just as with WebTV and Ultimate TV, and they'll use it primarily as a learning experience, and wait for their major cash expenditure until a) they know the market, and b) they have weakened their opponents more by fear, uncertainty and doubt (by the very threat of a massive Microsoft war campain against their competitors).
Perhaps going straight to a warning for all sites will be too tough. Start with a "This site is insecure" symbol in the status bar". Then warn all site owners about what will happen later. A large chunk will start looking at it - at the very least the people operating Windows web servers.
Now, if they then do introduce the warning, users will certainly notice that they don't appear for all sites, which will make it even more likely that they will complain to the webmaster (or just stop using the site), than to Microsoft.
And if Windows starts blocking network connections to "insecure" (that is, non-Palladium enabled) websites, then most of them WILL switch, or disappear.
The "safer" way for Microsoft, is to make their next version of Windows warn you whenever you try to do something "unsafe". Imagine if each time you connect to a webserver not running this security stuff, you get a window saying that you are connecting to an insecure site and that you should ask the site operator to upgrade to a secure system.
Then give users the option of blocking unsafe sites permanently.
Then after somewhere around 70-80% of all systems are "secure" they issue an upgrade that make your machine refuse to deal with unsafe data by default, hiding an option deep down in Windows to allow it. Possibly allowing you to "self authenticate" old applications.
After a while, you then make the authentication mandatory.
This has the possibility of working, if they aren't met with solid opposition from the start, and if they have the sense to do it gradually enough to not alienate too many people.
Keep in mind that Windows is based on obsoleting things. There's so much old software that stops working between versions of Windows, that that argument simply don't hold - your Windows software WILL become worthless sooner or later, but people still stick with it.
And as for switching to Linux, you might not have that option, as the entire point about Palladium was that it is mean to be enforced in hardware via alliances with Intel and AMD (for now).
Microsoft may be evil, but they aren't stupid... People can't afford to take the risk of discounting their ideas.
Be very afraid of Microsoft.
But as I said, I don't think they'll succeed, exactly because enough people ARE afraid enough of Microsoft to fight things like this.
Well, if your new PC refused to run binaries that weren't authenticated, that would pretty much kill open source if the authentication process was difficult enough. But it would also never catch on.
Except that if you buy as little as a single game for it, Microsoft lose less than 150 USD. It won't take many games sold to you before Microsoft makes money on you.
Presumably the '?' was there because it is an open question whether he is our "favorite computer criminal", not whether or not he is a criminal. (Note the "favorite" there).
I claim that it usually isn't, since the typical consumer couldn't care less, and usually won't even know or remmber, who were first.
My example of the Sony Walkman is a valid one: How many consumers buy Sony Walkmans because they were first? Most consumers won't even know they were first, nor know that Walkman refers to a trademarked Sony product, not to the type of product itself. Same for Roller bladers vs. inline skates, and a number of other products.
The thing is, except for geeks, nobody cares whether or not open source OS's or Windows or MacOS or whatever had a codec first.
What matters to ordinary consumers is what is available now, today, when someone sends them a video clip and they want to watch it.
Yes, it would be beneficial for open source to lead the way in many ways. But is it critical? I'd say no. What is important is to support something as soon as it gains widespread usage, not as soon as it is available.
To comment on your claim that open source software isn't ever the one that breaks the mold, I'd say you are doubly wrong. First and foremost, open source software has broken the mold time and time again. If it hadn't been for most of the internet protocols implemented as open source, for instance, the evolution of the internet would have had to wait much longer to achieve a size large enough for commercial vendors to be interested.
That's your first error. The second is related: OSS can easily be first, because many OSS programmers are motivated by whats cool and interesting to work on, not what can or will pay of economically. So while a company needs to justify it's development expenses to its board and shareholders, OSS developers can get straight to work and develop a solution.
Yes, in the long run somebody could reimplement the ideas as proprietary software. But who cares? As much as I despise Microsoft, I'd think it was great if they supported Ogg in their products, for instance, as that would make it much more likely that Ogg would gain widespread use.
They care whether they can play that new cool video clip that all their friends are talking about.
After all, how many people give a damn that Walkman is a Sony trademark, and stick to Sony because they were first?