"I am not so sure that Canada's collectives want to "kill the download industry" as much as they [Canada] are still upset about the United States failure to comply with the WTO ruling on the Byrd Amendment."
This is a really simplistic view of international relations. Canada is not a homogenous entity that thinks with one hive-mind, led by its government. Government trade retaliation because of US international treaty violations, and a non-starter proposal to tax music downloads by the Canadian version of the RIAA, are two completely different issues. After all, you don't consider the RIAA to speak for the US government, do you? This is an industry money grab, pure & simple.
Canada's government discards its own protection: competing debate of the case in a free press. So the blogger becomes the only voice presenting the story to most of the public.
Indeed, whether the government wanted this or not they must vacate the field of public opinion lest their comments ruin their chances of successful prosecution. To be fair, their well-oiled spin machine is staying silent in the interests of a fair trial.
This tawdry little conflict illustrates how free, independent press, competing to tell the story most completely, is the most essential part of a functioning free people
But on the other hand, to live in a just and fair society, the rule of law must be respected. This includes a fair & unbiased trials, thus the publication ban to prevent a tainted jury. People on/. rightly stress a free & independent press, but there are obvioulsy limits as to what should be published if one is interested in having justice.
"However, there's absolutely nothing wrong with copying a good idea."
There is if CopyCat Co. copies an idea wholesale and tries to pass it off as an original from Ingenuity Inc. This is what's going on here.
"The iPod Suffle is certainly a trademark, but the SuperShuffle isn't the same thing, and no one is going to be fooled
With two 512MB/1GB flash mp3 players both called "shuffle" and visually almost indistinguishable, both promoted with similar advertising, people are guaranteed to get confused.
"So, would Apple have a leg to stand on? Or is this a situation where the consumer (finally) is going to win on all sides?"
You are severely misinformed. Clearer cases of copyright and patent infringement don't come along that often. Apple will sue, (they should sue), and they will win. If you think consumers would win by quashing the impetus for innovation - the ability for a company to profit from it's ideas - then you should send your mail-order economics degree back for a refund. I know I would be pissed if my company spent millions in R&D, as well as months coming up with a great advertising campiagn, just to see it ripped off lock, stock & barrel by someone who doesn't have to spend a penny on said costs. No-one would ever bother making new products if there was no protection from this.
Too bad Moto isn't including iTunes support in their awesome (though expensive) RAZR phone or at least across most of their high-end mobiles. Moto also states that they will be compatible with non-iTMS offerings such as Real as well, so it's not an exclusive.
The War Measures Act was only very reluctantly used during the FLQ Crisis because there were no other 'intermediary' laws available at the time with more limited scope to handle such a crisis. Remember, at the time the new provincial government in Québec suddenly had mail bombs going off, threats, kidnappings of high-ranking officials, and the assassination of the minister of labour. This inexperienced government had no idea how large or organized a group they faced (the terrorists certainly seemed to be organized and have great reach) and had to bunker the entire cabinet down under heavy guard for fear of their lives. The atmosphere was highly charged and not only the locked-down cabinet, but the mayor of Montréal and the police in Québec all called for the invocation of the Act by the federal government before Trudeau reluctantly agreed.
And to correct your history, the War Measures Act was halted by the same Liberal government that invoked it, less than one month later (November 1970). It was replaced as soon as possible by the more reasonable Public Order Temporary Measures Act of 1970, which lasted less than a few months. While many innocent people were detained for up to a month under the War Measures Act by over-zealous police forces, none were deported for torture or jailed indefinietly without charge. This is significantly different than the situation with the Patriot Act.
" Nine years after Microsoft invented it, there's no justification for Mac mice to not have a scroll wheel [...]"
I love how history revisionists always credit the winners with inventing everything. Microsoft did not invent the scroll wheel, it was invented by Mouse Systems in the early 1990s. It was *popularized* by Microsoft's Intellimouse in 1996.
In the same vein, I've seen more than a few polls in the last few years where many people think Microsoft is actually the most innovative company in the world. I guess if Greatest Advertising Expenditure = Most Innovative that might be true. Despite what their PR Dept is spouting, as far as tech companies go Microsoft is not an innovator.
"The iTunes Music Store in Canada works with the Canadian dollar, and purchase and download of songs requires a valid credit card with a billing address in Canada.
Any Canadian out there who wants to be my best friend? "
"I've been to North America many times, as far west as San Fransico, as far east as New York, as far south as Cape Kennedy and as far north as Canada. I will not being going back though. The requirements to be finger printed and iris scanned are the most over the top in the western world. Law enforcement is comparibly officious and oppresive and the people are highly insulated with very limited knowledge of the world in which they live."
Don't group Canada in with your view of 'America'. You won't have to be fingerprinted nor iris scanned to get into Canada, and even though Canadians aren't the greatest on world knowledge they're not the worst either. Your assumption that "North America" (no doubt excluding Mexico & Central America) is one big homogeneous blob shows the same lack of world knowledge that you accuse Americans of having.
There are tons of MacOS Ogg Vorbis players, here are some:
Sourceforge Quicktime Components Play Ogg Vorbis file on QuickTime (including QT-based players, like iTunes). Note that this is still under development and may have bugs. http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/
A Better QuickTime Ogg Vorbis Plugin Try this one if the Sourceforge one above dosen't work for your configuration. http://www.macosxhints.com/article .php?story=20021 103065300430
MacAMP Like WinAMP or XMMS. http://www.macamp.com/
Whamb Whamb player, haven't tried it. http://www.whamb.com/
More Ogg Vorbis Software for MacOS X Here's a list from the Vorbis folks. http://www.vorbis.com/software.psp/
Well, don't read the Take Control books on your PDA if you don't want to. They're in PDF format so you can read them on your desktop or print them out. A key advantage to them is their short publishing cycle- they're often updated and relevant. And buddy, these books may only be 50-150pgs but aren't not skimpy on the info. Finding the same info on Google will take your quite a few hours, I guarantee it. I guess if a half-dozen hours is not worth $5-10 to ya, knock yourself out.
Before you dump on them too much, subscribe to the TidBITS mailing list itself and you can get an idea of what the books will be like. I have been on the list for well over a decade and out of all the numerous mailing lists I've been on, this one is the one that always gets read. The articles are useful, very well-written and in-depth on the topics they cover: this is why TidBITS is one of the longest-running lists on the internet. It's actually useful.
We should remember that the likely outcome of this case - even if all of Microsoft's appeals are unsuccessful - will be a separate MediaPlayer-free version of Windows in European Union countries, and in the EU alone. Those of us in all other markets will suffer the same as before. Further, you can bet that over time MS will attempt to make European-only Windows versions of server code that make interoperability with WindowsEU accessible, but outside of the EU it's business as usual. They would likely do this by diverging EU-compliant and non-EU versions of server offerings.
One can only hope that other governments have the foresight to investigate like the European Commission and US DoJ has, and soon. Certainly if MS violated antitrust laws in these two jurisdictions, you'd think the same practices would also be illegal in others such as Canada, New Zealand, India, Japan, etc, etc... why has nothing been done so far elsewhere?
Re:Has Enderle actually been correct on anything?
on
Enderle's Ferrari Laptop
·
· Score: 3, Informative
From my experience, no. I have no idea why he is quoted so often when he (quite obviously in many cases) has doen not offer many quotes of value - it must be that he's seen to it that more journalists get his business card that most other "analysts". Since you mentioned Apple, just months ago he predicted Apple would ditch their own hardware development roadmap and migrate to x86 by the end of 2003, adding "When you are down to 2 percent share and the trend is still in the wrong direction you need to do something before someone asks you to turn out the lights," OK Rob, Apple will get right on that.
Even people who work for Microsoft know he's full of it. Seeing a quote from him in an article just warns the reader of lazy journalism.
Looks like the headline-grabbers like Pataki and Bloomberg, amongst others, now have little to say about their quick denouncements of Canada for the whole power mess. Interesting that this is the same reaction pattern for the current Canadian internet pharmacy spat, where FDA commissioners are now publicly alleging Canadian drugs to be unsafe. Is 'mouth off first and ask questions later' now an official US political strategy?
"the LUG you were in simply wasn't a LUG. It was an "anything-but-Windows" group. Possibly it was a "play-with-the-latest-cool-thing" group. Maybe it was a UNIX group. But it was never a Linux group."
I have news for ya: Yes, it was. See, Linux groups can take all shapes & sizes, forms, and encompass many philosophies - not just Linux as a cause the way RSS evangelizes. This diversity is an important factor in the community you belong to; some groups are more interested in tinkering, in cost, in the functionality and extensibility of Linux, than the political aspects. And that's great: it's this very part of the community that makes Linux palatable to many in the business community, and many newbies.
"There is a lot of politics of ideals in the OSS world and in particular Linux. In fact, I would call it baggage to many in the business world."
"I'm glad your LUG folded. If that was the message you and your friends were propagating then you were doing more harm than good."
Wow, what spectacular StallmanVision you have developed. You seem to hold the freedom of Linux in high regard but people actually using that same freedom in contempt. Realise that there are Linux (and *BSD, and Mac, etc) OSS communities out there that are just as legitimate as the rather narrow one you espouse which is all about idealism.
MyTunes going open source is actually a bad move in this case. Hacks & a more broad functionality for MyTunes will likely be accelerated by going open source. While another app or two is required to get full-fledged Kazaa-like sharing over the internet currently, this would be quickly integrated into an open source MyTunes. OSS development would probably keep ahead of any desperate attempts by Apple engineers to restrict illegal file-sharing by iTunes users, including AAC files.
What would be the result of this? Major labels terminating their license agreements with Apple to sell music via iTMS, certainly. iTunes subsequently waning in utility & popularity as other players catch up with iTunes while still offering secure online music purchases (these also eventually fall prey to their own myTunes if they get popular enough). Either Apple and others exit market leaving us where we started before all this, or hardware-enforced DRM (such as Palladium) gets a further boost from this obvious example of the dangers of lax DRM.
Good job! Net result will be a worse future than present. Yeah, yeah, OSS = Good; Proprietary = Evil, etc etc. In the practical world we live in, open source may actually hurt the market & consumer choice in this case.
This policy does not make sense: Since it is fairly obvious the 'security' breach rationale for firing this employee is merely a convenient reason for dismissal, there must be a real reason (after all, MS managers have leeway to consider what constitutes a breach, the seriousness and whether or not to enforce action. It is also obvious little information of significance was released as you point out).
The first and foremost underlying reason for this dismissal is probably the perceived embarassment of the company by being seen to be purchasing a truckload of G5 Macs. The fact that they would see this as embarassing at all reveals part of the management attitude at Microsoft. Would the managers have chosen enforcement action if he had taken a photo of a truckload of Dells instead? Unlikely. These were in all likelihood not Mac Business Unit managers involved: Would a manager in the MBU be embarassed by an admission that they purchase Macs? Hardly. It's apparent therefore that much of the (non-MBU) management at MS perceives a company adoption or use of Macs as an embarassment.
It's interesting that a "Not invented here" attitude like this pervaded Apple a number of years ago, and caused them no end of strategic problems. Ironic that a case can be made that it is now Microsoft with such a culture, whereas it's now Apple who has a much more flexible attitude.
"However, you did not disclose the name and location of the building in which these computers were housed, the department that works in that building, and the exact computers, with pictures. That is what this guy did, and why they fired him. All in all, I would say this counts as proprietary information."
This guy didn't exactly do the things you allege he did either - he mentioned where the G5s were unloaded (not housed), that the PrintShop was in the building (common knowledge from signs all over the campus and in publicly-availabls MS maps of the cmapus), and the computer models unloaded. If any of this public information and easily-inferred knowledge (gee, they develop Mac software, ya think they buy Macs at Microsoft?) is to be considered proprietary and serious enough to result in dismissal, then MS is taking the most obtuse interpretation of 'proprietary' possible. It's equivalent to me dismissing someone at my company because they provided instructions on their blog how visitors to the Welcome Centre can get to the public washrooms. Yeah, technically I could consder that 'proprietary' information.
This is obviously an ill-advised attempt to do something about the perceived optics of MS buying a truckload of Macs.
Headlining news stories like this are the cause of overblown expectations and inevitable dissapointment when the actual stats come out. Of *course* 5% of procs will run at close to 80% of theoretical maximum; here Wired is doing a simple linear extrapolation of this to all 1,100 procs which is completely unrealistic. Big Mac will be lucky to reach 60% of tmax, and more likely will achieve closer to 50%, being relatively untried and untuned.
This is undoubtedly an incredibly cost-effective machine, but it will be lucky to get in the top 10 at all. Number 2 is a pipe dream.
I take issue with CCAGW's assumption, and the same assumuption by many posters here on/. that a moving towards a monopoly situation is a socialist act. It is not: we are in the current MS monopoly situation almost entirely without state intervention (many might say *because* of no state intervention). Monopolies in many cases are the result of very capitalist environments.
That being said, what the CCAGW is saying in this case holds merit. The best situation for both consumers of technology and the industry is fair competition - and believe it or not, the open source model is not the only game in town. Software that takes a great deal of start-up research or investment (not just the work of many programmers) is not well suited for open source development. For maximum benefit, it is necessary to have a market where both open source and traditional proprietary software companies can offer what each does best, and let consumers have choice. It is also in no-ones best interest to have a backlash against open source adoption in response to legislation such as this.
I think a moderately regulated and openly competitive industry is best, somewhere between the current poorly-regulated free-for-all and the proposed Massachusetts legislation.
Yes, it's business politics (also known as 'competition'). Apple would have to have major chutzpah to actively & publicly contribute to OOo on MacOS. Knowing their track record and specific software strengths, how good would an Apple-ized version of OOo turn out? It would be kick-ass, and immediately popular (see: Safari, iTMS, etc). In the ensuing paid office suite market meltdown, MS would drop Office for the Mac market faster than you can say "legally definsible reasons for doing so - Thanks Apple!" How would this then bide for Mac market position? Cue waves of articles with words like 'beleaguered' and 'abandoned', and this time they may have some merit.
That's not to say that the company isn't savvy, and could wisely be working on an Office replacement (OOo-based or otherwise) just in case MS decides to throw down the gauntlet one day. They have done this in the past (eg. Marklar), but you'd never hear them announce projects such as these publicly.
There are very good reasons to dump on their condemnation-by-slight-praise approach. They can point out what they see as flaws in the licence, and are probably expected to. But their real politics are revealed in the end:
"Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do."
Huh? What does their APSL opinion have to do with other parts of the MacOS? They are not protesting the APSL in this statement, but that fact that Apple releases any proprietary code at all, which apparently is a no-no for the FSF. Most telling is their last sentence about 'judging the company' - since they don't like the APSL, they are now judging the company on it's decision not to release the entire MacOS under another open source license not even part of the review? At this point the opinion has stepped beyond a mere opinion on a license and has become more of a political message. It's no wonder that the more practical approach of the OSI is more effective at generating positive change.
I don't really think there's that much competition betwen Linux and *BSD and MacOS X, except on IRC and discussion forums. In reality, these compliment one another far more than they compete - as can be seen from solutions introduced on one and quickly available on the others. But the complimentary effects of each is not limited to their technologies, and the greatest benefits often go unnoticed: psychology. As one or any become acceptable (on the desktop, in enterprise, wherever), each becomes more of a viable alternative. The dam breaking is getting users & IT managers to consider something that is non-Windows; after that specifically *what* they consider is less important. If enough consider an alternative, then we can say real competition will be taking place in the market (and maybe at that point these three can be considered competing with one another). We're a long way off from that, though.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a really simplistic view of international relations. Canada is not a homogenous entity that thinks with one hive-mind, led by its government. Government trade retaliation because of US international treaty violations, and a non-starter proposal to tax music downloads by the Canadian version of the RIAA, are two completely different issues. After all, you don't consider the RIAA to speak for the US government, do you? This is an industry money grab, pure & simple.
Canada's government discards its own protection: competing debate of the case in a free press. So the blogger becomes the only voice presenting the story to most of the public.
/. rightly stress a free & independent press, but there are obvioulsy limits as to what should be published if one is interested in having justice.
Indeed, whether the government wanted this or not they must vacate the field of public opinion lest their comments ruin their chances of successful prosecution. To be fair, their well-oiled spin machine is staying silent in the interests of a fair trial.
This tawdry little conflict illustrates how free, independent press, competing to tell the story most completely, is the most essential part of a functioning free people
But on the other hand, to live in a just and fair society, the rule of law must be respected. This includes a fair & unbiased trials, thus the publication ban to prevent a tainted jury. People on
"However, there's absolutely nothing wrong with copying a good idea."
There is if CopyCat Co. copies an idea wholesale and tries to pass it off as an original from Ingenuity Inc. This is what's going on here.
"The iPod Suffle is certainly a trademark, but the SuperShuffle isn't the same thing, and no one is going to be fooled
With two 512MB/1GB flash mp3 players both called "shuffle" and visually almost indistinguishable, both promoted with similar advertising, people are guaranteed to get confused.
"So, would Apple have a leg to stand on? Or is this a situation where the consumer (finally) is going to win on all sides?"
You are severely misinformed. Clearer cases of copyright and patent infringement don't come along that often. Apple will sue, (they should sue), and they will win. If you think consumers would win by quashing the impetus for innovation - the ability for a company to profit from it's ideas - then you should send your mail-order economics degree back for a refund. I know I would be pissed if my company spent millions in R&D, as well as months coming up with a great advertising campiagn, just to see it ripped off lock, stock & barrel by someone who doesn't have to spend a penny on said costs. No-one would ever bother making new products if there was no protection from this.
#1. Microsoft has already flooed the market;
#2. The XBox already costs MS more than USD$300 to produce.
Too bad Moto isn't including iTunes support in their awesome (though expensive) RAZR phone or at least across most of their high-end mobiles. Moto also states that they will be compatible with non-iTMS offerings such as Real as well, so it's not an exclusive.
The War Measures Act was only very reluctantly used during the FLQ Crisis because there were no other 'intermediary' laws available at the time with more limited scope to handle such a crisis. Remember, at the time the new provincial government in Québec suddenly had mail bombs going off, threats, kidnappings of high-ranking officials, and the assassination of the minister of labour. This inexperienced government had no idea how large or organized a group they faced (the terrorists certainly seemed to be organized and have great reach) and had to bunker the entire cabinet down under heavy guard for fear of their lives. The atmosphere was highly charged and not only the locked-down cabinet, but the mayor of Montréal and the police in Québec all called for the invocation of the Act by the federal government before Trudeau reluctantly agreed.
And to correct your history, the War Measures Act was halted by the same Liberal government that invoked it, less than one month later (November 1970). It was replaced as soon as possible by the more reasonable Public Order Temporary Measures Act of 1970, which lasted less than a few months. While many innocent people were detained for up to a month under the War Measures Act by over-zealous police forces, none were deported for torture or jailed indefinietly without charge. This is significantly different than the situation with the Patriot Act.
" Nine years after Microsoft invented it, there's no justification for Mac mice to not have a scroll wheel [...]"
I love how history revisionists always credit the winners with inventing everything. Microsoft did not invent the scroll wheel, it was invented by Mouse Systems in the early 1990s. It was *popularized* by Microsoft's Intellimouse in 1996.
In the same vein, I've seen more than a few polls in the last few years where many people think Microsoft is actually the most innovative company in the world. I guess if Greatest Advertising Expenditure = Most Innovative that might be true. Despite what their PR Dept is spouting, as far as tech companies go Microsoft is not an innovator.
"The iTunes Music Store in Canada works with the Canadian dollar, and purchase and download of songs requires a valid credit card with a billing address in Canada.
Any Canadian out there who wants to be my best friend? "
Now there's yet another reason to marry a Canadian
" The only difference between the two countries is currency"
You haven't been been up to Canada since the late 50's, have you?
There are tons of MacOS Ogg Vorbis players, here are some:
e .php?story=20021 103065300430
Sourceforge Quicktime Components
Play Ogg Vorbis file on QuickTime (including QT-based players, like iTunes). Note that this is still under development and may have bugs.
http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/
A Better QuickTime Ogg Vorbis Plugin
Try this one if the Sourceforge one above dosen't work for your configuration.
http://www.macosxhints.com/articl
MacAMP
Like WinAMP or XMMS.
http://www.macamp.com/
Whamb
Whamb player, haven't tried it.
http://www.whamb.com/
More Ogg Vorbis Software for MacOS X
Here's a list from the Vorbis folks.
http://www.vorbis.com/software.psp/
Well, don't read the Take Control books on your PDA if you don't want to. They're in PDF format so you can read them on your desktop or print them out. A key advantage to them is their short publishing cycle- they're often updated and relevant. And buddy, these books may only be 50-150pgs but aren't not skimpy on the info. Finding the same info on Google will take your quite a few hours, I guarantee it. I guess if a half-dozen hours is not worth $5-10 to ya, knock yourself out.
Before you dump on them too much, subscribe to the TidBITS mailing list itself and you can get an idea of what the books will be like. I have been on the list for well over a decade and out of all the numerous mailing lists I've been on, this one is the one that always gets read. The articles are useful, very well-written and in-depth on the topics they cover: this is why TidBITS is one of the longest-running lists on the internet. It's actually useful.
We should remember that the likely outcome of this case - even if all of Microsoft's appeals are unsuccessful - will be a separate MediaPlayer-free version of Windows in European Union countries, and in the EU alone. Those of us in all other markets will suffer the same as before. Further, you can bet that over time MS will attempt to make European-only Windows versions of server code that make interoperability with WindowsEU accessible, but outside of the EU it's business as usual. They would likely do this by diverging EU-compliant and non-EU versions of server offerings.
One can only hope that other governments have the foresight to investigate like the European Commission and US DoJ has, and soon. Certainly if MS violated antitrust laws in these two jurisdictions, you'd think the same practices would also be illegal in others such as Canada, New Zealand, India, Japan, etc, etc... why has nothing been done so far elsewhere?
From my experience, no. I have no idea why he is quoted so often when he (quite obviously in many cases) has doen not offer many quotes of value - it must be that he's seen to it that more journalists get his business card that most other "analysts". Since you mentioned Apple, just months ago he predicted Apple would ditch their own hardware development roadmap and migrate to x86 by the end of 2003, adding "When you are down to 2 percent share and the trend is still in the wrong direction you need to do something before someone asks you to turn out the lights," OK Rob, Apple will get right on that. Even people who work for Microsoft know he's full of it. Seeing a quote from him in an article just warns the reader of lazy journalism.
'cept for the extinction of Carrier Pigeons.
Looks like the headline-grabbers like Pataki and Bloomberg, amongst others, now have little to say about their quick denouncements of Canada for the whole power mess. Interesting that this is the same reaction pattern for the current Canadian internet pharmacy spat, where FDA commissioners are now publicly alleging Canadian drugs to be unsafe. Is 'mouth off first and ask questions later' now an official US political strategy?
MyTunes going open source is actually a bad move in this case. Hacks & a more broad functionality for MyTunes will likely be accelerated by going open source. While another app or two is required to get full-fledged Kazaa-like sharing over the internet currently, this would be quickly integrated into an open source MyTunes. OSS development would probably keep ahead of any desperate attempts by Apple engineers to restrict illegal file-sharing by iTunes users, including AAC files.
What would be the result of this? Major labels terminating their license agreements with Apple to sell music via iTMS, certainly. iTunes subsequently waning in utility & popularity as other players catch up with iTunes while still offering secure online music purchases (these also eventually fall prey to their own myTunes if they get popular enough). Either Apple and others exit market leaving us where we started before all this, or hardware-enforced DRM (such as Palladium) gets a further boost from this obvious example of the dangers of lax DRM.
Good job! Net result will be a worse future than present. Yeah, yeah, OSS = Good; Proprietary = Evil, etc etc. In the practical world we live in, open source may actually hurt the market & consumer choice in this case.
This policy does not make sense: Since it is fairly obvious the 'security' breach rationale for firing this employee is merely a convenient reason for dismissal, there must be a real reason (after all, MS managers have leeway to consider what constitutes a breach, the seriousness and whether or not to enforce action. It is also obvious little information of significance was released as you point out).
The first and foremost underlying reason for this dismissal is probably the perceived embarassment of the company by being seen to be purchasing a truckload of G5 Macs. The fact that they would see this as embarassing at all reveals part of the management attitude at Microsoft. Would the managers have chosen enforcement action if he had taken a photo of a truckload of Dells instead? Unlikely. These were in all likelihood not Mac Business Unit managers involved: Would a manager in the MBU be embarassed by an admission that they purchase Macs? Hardly. It's apparent therefore that much of the (non-MBU) management at MS perceives a company adoption or use of Macs as an embarassment.
It's interesting that a "Not invented here" attitude like this pervaded Apple a number of years ago, and caused them no end of strategic problems. Ironic that a case can be made that it is now Microsoft with such a culture, whereas it's now Apple who has a much more flexible attitude.
"However, you did not disclose the name and location of the building in which these computers were housed, the department that works in that building, and the exact computers, with pictures. That is what this guy did, and why they fired him. All in all, I would say this counts as proprietary information."
This guy didn't exactly do the things you allege he did either - he mentioned where the G5s were unloaded (not housed), that the PrintShop was in the building (common knowledge from signs all over the campus and in publicly-availabls MS maps of the cmapus), and the computer models unloaded. If any of this public information and easily-inferred knowledge (gee, they develop Mac software, ya think they buy Macs at Microsoft?) is to be considered proprietary and serious enough to result in dismissal, then MS is taking the most obtuse interpretation of 'proprietary' possible. It's equivalent to me dismissing someone at my company because they provided instructions on their blog how visitors to the Welcome Centre can get to the public washrooms. Yeah, technically I could consder that 'proprietary' information.
This is obviously an ill-advised attempt to do something about the perceived optics of MS buying a truckload of Macs.
Headlining news stories like this are the cause of overblown expectations and inevitable dissapointment when the actual stats come out. Of *course* 5% of procs will run at close to 80% of theoretical maximum; here Wired is doing a simple linear extrapolation of this to all 1,100 procs which is completely unrealistic. Big Mac will be lucky to reach 60% of tmax, and more likely will achieve closer to 50%, being relatively untried and untuned.
This is undoubtedly an incredibly cost-effective machine, but it will be lucky to get in the top 10 at all. Number 2 is a pipe dream.
I take issue with CCAGW's assumption, and the same assumuption by many posters here on /. that a moving towards a monopoly situation is a socialist act. It is not: we are in the current MS monopoly situation almost entirely without state intervention (many might say *because* of no state intervention). Monopolies in many cases are the result of very capitalist environments.
That being said, what the CCAGW is saying in this case holds merit. The best situation for both consumers of technology and the industry is fair competition - and believe it or not, the open source model is not the only game in town. Software that takes a great deal of start-up research or investment (not just the work of many programmers) is not well suited for open source development. For maximum benefit, it is necessary to have a market where both open source and traditional proprietary software companies can offer what each does best, and let consumers have choice. It is also in no-ones best interest to have a backlash against open source adoption in response to legislation such as this.
I think a moderately regulated and openly competitive industry is best, somewhere between the current poorly-regulated free-for-all and the proposed Massachusetts legislation.
Yes, it's business politics (also known as 'competition'). Apple would have to have major chutzpah to actively & publicly contribute to OOo on MacOS. Knowing their track record and specific software strengths, how good would an Apple-ized version of OOo turn out? It would be kick-ass, and immediately popular (see: Safari, iTMS, etc). In the ensuing paid office suite market meltdown, MS would drop Office for the Mac market faster than you can say "legally definsible reasons for doing so - Thanks Apple!" How would this then bide for Mac market position? Cue waves of articles with words like 'beleaguered' and 'abandoned', and this time they may have some merit.
That's not to say that the company isn't savvy, and could wisely be working on an Office replacement (OOo-based or otherwise) just in case MS decides to throw down the gauntlet one day. They have done this in the past (eg. Marklar), but you'd never hear them announce projects such as these publicly.
There are very good reasons to dump on their condemnation-by-slight-praise approach. They can point out what they see as flaws in the licence, and are probably expected to. But their real politics are revealed in the end:
"Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do."
Huh? What does their APSL opinion have to do with other parts of the MacOS? They are not protesting the APSL in this statement, but that fact that Apple releases any proprietary code at all, which apparently is a no-no for the FSF. Most telling is their last sentence about 'judging the company' - since they don't like the APSL, they are now judging the company on it's decision not to release the entire MacOS under another open source license not even part of the review? At this point the opinion has stepped beyond a mere opinion on a license and has become more of a political message. It's no wonder that the more practical approach of the OSI is more effective at generating positive change.
I don't really think there's that much competition betwen Linux and *BSD and MacOS X, except on IRC and discussion forums. In reality, these compliment one another far more than they compete - as can be seen from solutions introduced on one and quickly available on the others. But the complimentary effects of each is not limited to their technologies, and the greatest benefits often go unnoticed: psychology. As one or any become acceptable (on the desktop, in enterprise, wherever), each becomes more of a viable alternative. The dam breaking is getting users & IT managers to consider something that is non-Windows; after that specifically *what* they consider is less important. If enough consider an alternative, then we can say real competition will be taking place in the market (and maybe at that point these three can be considered competing with one another). We're a long way off from that, though.