Except that Ogg it is inferior to AAC and has no DRM. They MIGHT add it as a playback on the iPod, just to include another playback codec, making the iPod "better", but not for anything else. Certainly not their "Delivery package of choice"!
Games are a MONEY buisness. That means that they have to be distributed in binary form to have any change of copy protection. Otherise you'd sell one game and all Linux users would be playing with it. (Ok, only 90% but whatever) Couple that with Linux incalulatably small desktop market share and you have a truly dead "market" for first run commercial games. Don't expect COMMERCIAL developers to fall all over themselves to give you free goods.
Now it's not ALL doom and gloom. Actually the MMORPG situation may change that a bit, since you are absolutely dependant on a remote server, it's easy to "copy protect" the content. Then the client itself becomes free as it is completely useless without the server and your paid for user account. At that point all Linux needs it market share to make developing for it worth the effort.
If Linux hangs in there, it may happen some day. But all you have to do is look around and you can plainly see why there are "no" linux games and why there will not be any flood of new Linux games any time soon. Don't EXPECT charity. Make it yourself, use a gaming platform or take what you get.
That was maybe 20% of a real story. None of those methods could be used more than a couple times before you got caught. Send mail at 2am, then the guy that really was there at 2am tells the boss you weren't there. Doh! And one of the examples wasn't even trying to get away with anything but was a great example of being able to stay in touch even while away!
And don't think your hard working peers will let you get away with it either. Good luck with that slacking guy, I'll just take your job when your booted out thank you!
"zealots" should neither dismiss NOR accept any claim as fact until actual proof and/or judgment is rendered in a court of law.
There is a middle ground! It would even be better to be cautiously optimistic or cautiosly pessimistic. Look! There! At least 5 possible stances! 3 of which are not "SCO is spouting bullshit!" or "It's the end of Linux!"
Though of course the very definition of "zealot" is that of a person for whom there is no middle ground, nor even 2 sides, so for "zealots", well, they should just do what "zealots" always do, play chicken little, fume, foam and otherwise be useless to everyone.
Here's my non scientific anti-bell curve of the/. response...
SCO's claim...
* 69% "is utter bullshit!!!!" * 5% "is probably not enforceable." * 1% - "may or may not be enforceable, I'll have to wait for the evidence before making any descisions." * 5% "is possibly enforceable." * 20% "means the end of Linux!!!!"
That is at least for the posters, probably very different for the total reading population. Maybe there should be a/. poll?
Give it away free, easiest way to cut into other's market share. Netscape and IE BOTH did it (Netscape was NEVER not available for free, atleast it never was to me)
You can't really complain about someone picking up on your/own/ tactics. What if MS were to start giving the OS away free to everyone? (Like Sun has started doing in a limited way) What would you say then?
"You can't do that! Because, uh... were doing that and then we wouldn't be able to compete.. er..."
And if Linux is allowed to have lobby groups and SIGs that lobby educational and government entities on the suposed benefits of using "Open source only", why not Microsoft doing the opposite? I mean you have to expect it! Instead we get more whining.
Linux has set up a huge and market dangerous precident by giving away so much functionality for free. If that's the way Sun (partially already), Microsoft (also partially already) and Apple all go over the next few years, where will that leave Linux?
When you set up unorthodox battle rules, don't be suprised when your enemy follows your tactics...
The lasers in these machines are 405nM which is not "blue" but a deep violet. Close to the edge of your sight. Deep blue is more like 450nM and the typical bright blue LEDs are 470nM.
Therefore they will appear much dimmer than they really are. I do not know what the wattage they are but the current red DVD recorders are using 50mW red lasers which are EXTREMELY bright and a definate threat to your eye sight (5mW in the eye is pretty painful).
In short the "blue" laser will proabbly not be all that great too look at either from an aesthetic or a health risk point of view.
The development of the "blue" (Really violet) laser diode has taken TREMENDOUS effort over the last 3-4 years. (Read up on it some time it's pretty interesting) Yes, it was mostly all done (though not ALL) in asian countries. The US can't (and shouldn't) be the leader of ALL tech you know.
I don't know why a blue dvd recorder HAS to be revolutionary to be news-worthy, It is evolutionary and it is news-worthy, therefore it's in the news.
"Holographic" storage has been talked about and played with incessently for almost a decade now. If it were practical, something would have been done with it by now. But the much simpler CD/DVD optical disk technology has progressed with sufficient speed and capacity to warrent more complex solutions completely unneccesary.
That and the fact that the Sun JVM is still the slowest, buggiest environment on the planet.
I'm sitting here trying to use Object Domain and on a p4-2.4 gig machine it's like running a drawing program in 1997 on a p-200. The screen updates are one a second and it frequently fails to redraw itself at all.
Contrast to a C# program I am running at the same time that is as instantaneous as you can imagine, like any other C or C++ windows program.
Frankly I care a lot less about a program that BARELY functions on multiple platforms than I do about having the same program perform flawlessly on ONE platform.
This is the exact same thing I have experienced with every sizable JAVA application I have ever used of the last several years. Why bother? Use a cross platform C or C++ tool kit. Hell TCL/TK programs linked to C or C++ backends behave much better! (Still ugly though)
Even the smallest company (like where I work) can write 90% of their code cross platform in C/C++ and use a platform specific front end and OS io API for the last 10%. Result? Native looking apps that run at full speed without need for special environments or the pulling out of the users short hairs (once a second).
Ugh... It "Monoplizes" your computer ON PURPOSE so that some 'tard in the other room can't fork you over. It's like taking YOUR monitor for YOUR computer with you into the next room.
Having one to control my media PC instead of having to snake a 75' monitor cable and the crappy IR keyboard over to the couch would be great!
You are right about the price though. They should be around $250 at most.
A "Smart Display" It is a remote display ONLY. It is not a complete computer.
When "connected" to the host machine (Via a wireless protocol), the host machine is not usable as 100% of the human/OS interaction is re-routed to the remote display. (The desktop monitor, if on, will show a sort of blank screen so no one can see what you are doing remotely). Though you could obviously still network to the machine as usual. This is the same way that the windows networked "Remote Desktop" in WIndows XP works today between two full machines, just now without wires to a specialized display/input device.
I don't know where you get the idea that XP is more of a "Black box" than any other version of windows from 3.1 on. It's simply not true. Please expound on what part of the XP OS is less accessable that the same part in 2k....
Well? You aren't actually basing that supposition on the fact that MS WANTED no access to the BIOS but that of course didn't happen are you?
I did not mean to indicate that x86 OSX would lead to PPC OXS sales. I figured it was clear that by switching to x86, the PPC version of OSX would never have happened. I meant that there would still be at least as many die-hards buying Apple branded x86 boxes with their "WOW" factor designs as there are now, maybe even more as more and more people got real exposure to OSX.
As far as accounting goes, how about we just look at the industry instead of making up numbers?
Apple is just about the only company left on the lower end where the OS and the hardware are tied togeather. And they are only barely alive. Everyone else figured it out long ago or died. Even Sun has Solaris for x86 and they are running Linux on Sparcs. Even IBM is wising up!Why can't apple?
Actually if you read todays WSJ there is an article that pretty much gives insight to why. Steve just isn't all there. That's all there is to it. He's just a/little/ too much of a dreamer and a/little/ to little of a realist. In the end I thing the slightly upset scale is doing nothing but hurting them and their customers.
If their sales of OSX went up 10x at $120 (with 95% profit margin on materisls) then yes they would be making more money. And as I said before if they got a 20% market share using osx that could only lead to an INCREASE on properly marketed apple branded hardware as well.
First of all their current market share is closer to 2%, and frankly yes, maybe not "overnight" (Sorry about the hyperbole) but I think they actualy would have a huge chance for success considering that the mac already has a huge cache of mature and popular commercial applications for it. But considering the price difference and the availability difference for their hardware, the choice most logically falls wo wintel. If they evened the hardware playing field I believe they would be MUCH more successful.
At this point I completely agree. Personally I think that making the switch when the moved to OSX the first time would have been the best. Since it is as you say a "Dragging kicking and screaming" thing already, changing the processor at the same time would not have been much worse. In fact, re-compiling an app for a new processor is HUGELY easier than porting it to a new OS which is what they are doing now moving from OS9 to OSX.
But now I think they ARE stuck until everyone is completely over to OSX and everything is humming again before they can even consider it. So... another 5 years?
I believe that they have already incorporated full DRM in their music products and an upcoming huge music announcement for some on-line music service will probably be taking full advantage of it. The about face is already happening.
The DRM question of "Will Apple have DRM" no longer exsists, but is now just "How will it be used?" is left to see.
Actually I believe that the complete opposite is true. Apples market share could go up 10x overnight if they released Mac OSX for x86. Hardware is a tough place to make money, the hardware COSTS money. Lost of it, profit margins are slim.
And even if Apple made the OS free-standing for any x86 machine, that would not stop Apple from being able to build ultra-stylish, high-priced, boutique x86 machines and put their own OS on it now would it? They'd probably sell exactly the same # of machines that way as the die hard Apple aficinados would probably still prefer to buy apple branded machines, AND it would grow their OS market share tremendously, maybe even driving their branded machine sales higher in the future.
Frankly I think not porting OSX to x86 was a huge blunder that will hold the company back another 5 years till the next actual achetecture change is forced upon them.
Re:DRM will be *needed* by linux
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
I don't see how your statement of making rentals equivilent to a purchase makes any sense. An electronic "rental" would cost maybe $2-3, whereas an electronic purchase might be $29 for the same DVD.
Maybe after you've DLed the "rental" for $3 and watched it you might like to keep it. If so, you'll use your settop box to go back and pay an additional $27 for the full thing, put a blank DVD in the machine and burn a single copy as if you went to the store and bought it.
All of that actually sounds like a great thing! It's almost Star Trek replicator in a tiny way. And it requires DRM to work. If there is no DRM then blockbuster is never going to (or be allowed to) electronicly rent movies like that.
Linus as always strikes me as being a lot more pragmatic than most Linux "leaders". His self professed "flame" was not a flame at all! It was a pragmatic stance. But here on/. any pragmatic stances are so far off the "center" of the vocal/. universe that they all SEEM like flames.
Thank ghod there is a sane and rational person at the core of Linux development. It might have a chance of succeeding long term because of Linus and his "flaming" pragmatizm.
"MozSuite" "MozBrowser" "MozMail" "MozNews" If they are just stupid prerelease code names then this entire thing is infinately more silly than I previously thought!
Slashdot Mirror
Except that Ogg it is inferior to AAC and has no DRM. They MIGHT add it as a playback on the iPod, just to include another playback codec, making the iPod "better", but not for anything else. Certainly not their "Delivery package of choice"!
Games are a MONEY buisness. That means that they have to be distributed in binary form to have any change of copy protection. Otherise you'd sell one game and all Linux users would be playing with it. (Ok, only 90% but whatever) Couple that with Linux incalulatably small desktop market share and you have a truly dead "market" for first run commercial games. Don't expect COMMERCIAL developers to fall all over themselves to give you free goods.
Now it's not ALL doom and gloom. Actually the MMORPG situation may change that a bit, since you are absolutely dependant on a remote server, it's easy to "copy protect" the content. Then the client itself becomes free as it is completely useless without the server and your paid for user account. At that point all Linux needs it market share to make developing for it worth the effort.
If Linux hangs in there, it may happen some day. But all you have to do is look around and you can plainly see why there are "no" linux games and why there will not be any flood of new Linux games any time soon. Don't EXPECT charity. Make it yourself, use a gaming platform or take what you get.
Heh, I just can't get the "Starfighter" connection out of my head. Does the game send a recruitor over to your house if you get a top 10% score?
That was maybe 20% of a real story. None of those methods could be used more than a couple times before you got caught. Send mail at 2am, then the guy that really was there at 2am tells the boss you weren't there. Doh! And one of the examples wasn't even trying to get away with anything but was a great example of being able to stay in touch even while away!
And don't think your hard working peers will let you get away with it either. Good luck with that slacking guy, I'll just take your job when your booted out thank you!
"zealots" should neither dismiss NOR accept any claim as fact until actual proof and/or judgment is rendered in a court of law.
/. response...
/. poll?
There is a middle ground! It would even be better to be cautiously optimistic or cautiosly pessimistic. Look! There! At least 5 possible stances! 3 of which are not "SCO is spouting bullshit!" or "It's the end of Linux!"
Though of course the very definition of "zealot" is that of a person for whom there is no middle ground, nor even 2 sides, so for "zealots", well, they should just do what "zealots" always do, play chicken little, fume, foam and otherwise be useless to everyone.
Here's my non scientific anti-bell curve of the
SCO's claim...
* 69% "is utter bullshit!!!!"
* 5% "is probably not enforceable."
* 1% - "may or may not be enforceable, I'll have to wait for the evidence before making any descisions."
* 5% "is possibly enforceable."
* 20% "means the end of Linux!!!!"
That is at least for the posters, probably very different for the total reading population. Maybe there should be a
Linux has been doing this for years!
/own/ tactics. What if MS were to start giving the OS away free to everyone? (Like Sun has started doing in a limited way) What would you say then?
Give it away free, easiest way to cut into other's market share. Netscape and IE BOTH did it (Netscape was NEVER not available for free, atleast it never was to me)
You can't really complain about someone picking up on your
"You can't do that! Because, uh... were doing that and then we wouldn't be able to compete.. er..."
And if Linux is allowed to have lobby groups and SIGs that lobby educational and government entities on the suposed benefits of using "Open source only", why not Microsoft doing the opposite? I mean you have to expect it! Instead we get more whining.
Linux has set up a huge and market dangerous precident by giving away so much functionality for free. If that's the way Sun (partially already), Microsoft (also partially already) and Apple all go over the next few years, where will that leave Linux?
When you set up unorthodox battle rules, don't be suprised when your enemy follows your tactics...
The lasers in these machines are 405nM which is not "blue" but a deep violet. Close to the edge of your sight. Deep blue is more like 450nM and the typical bright blue LEDs are 470nM.
Therefore they will appear much dimmer than they really are. I do not know what the wattage they are but the current red DVD recorders are using 50mW red lasers which are EXTREMELY bright and a definate threat to your eye sight (5mW in the eye is pretty painful).
In short the "blue" laser will proabbly not be all that great too look at either from an aesthetic or a health risk point of view.
The development of the "blue" (Really violet) laser diode has taken TREMENDOUS effort over the last 3-4 years. (Read up on it some time it's pretty interesting) Yes, it was mostly all done (though not ALL) in asian countries. The US can't (and shouldn't) be the leader of ALL tech you know.
I don't know why a blue dvd recorder HAS to be revolutionary to be news-worthy, It is evolutionary and it is news-worthy, therefore it's in the news.
"Holographic" storage has been talked about and played with incessently for almost a decade now. If it were practical, something would have been done with it by now. But the much simpler CD/DVD optical disk technology has progressed with sufficient speed and capacity to warrent more complex solutions completely unneccesary.
That and the fact that the Sun JVM is still the slowest, buggiest environment on the planet.
I'm sitting here trying to use Object Domain and on a p4-2.4 gig machine it's like running a drawing program in 1997 on a p-200. The screen updates are one a second and it frequently fails to redraw itself at all.
Contrast to a C# program I am running at the same time that is as instantaneous as you can imagine, like any other C or C++ windows program.
Frankly I care a lot less about a program that BARELY functions on multiple platforms than I do about having the same program perform flawlessly on ONE platform.
This is the exact same thing I have experienced with every sizable JAVA application I have ever used of the last several years. Why bother? Use a cross platform C or C++ tool kit. Hell TCL/TK programs linked to C or C++ backends behave much better! (Still ugly though)
Even the smallest company (like where I work) can write 90% of their code cross platform in C/C++ and use a platform specific front end and OS io API for the last 10%. Result? Native looking apps that run at full speed without need for special environments or the pulling out of the users short hairs (once a second).
You guys post far more Windows stories than Mac stories or almost any other "kind" of story. Why not just make a Windows "section" like YRO or Apple?
Go on do it!
Ugh... It "Monoplizes" your computer ON PURPOSE so that some 'tard in the other room can't fork you over. It's like taking YOUR monitor for YOUR computer with you into the next room.
Having one to control my media PC instead of having to snake a 75' monitor cable and the crappy IR keyboard over to the couch would be great!
You are right about the price though. They should be around $250 at most.
A "Smart Display" It is a remote display ONLY. It is not a complete computer.
When "connected" to the host machine (Via a wireless protocol), the host machine is not usable as 100% of the human/OS interaction is re-routed to the remote display. (The desktop monitor, if on, will show a sort of blank screen so no one can see what you are doing remotely). Though you could obviously still network to the machine as usual. This is the same way that the windows networked "Remote Desktop" in WIndows XP works today between two full machines, just now without wires to a specialized display/input device.
I don't know where you get the idea that XP is more of a "Black box" than any other version of windows from 3.1 on. It's simply not true. Please expound on what part of the XP OS is less accessable that the same part in 2k. ...
Well? You aren't actually basing that supposition on the fact that MS WANTED no access to the BIOS but that of course didn't happen are you?
Why the typical 5 minute /. memory (CRS) and Chicken Little Syndrom (CLS) of course! :)
I did not mean to indicate that x86 OSX would lead to PPC OXS sales. I figured it was clear that by switching to x86, the PPC version of OSX would never have happened. I meant that there would still be at least as many die-hards buying Apple branded x86 boxes with their "WOW" factor designs as there are now, maybe even more as more and more people got real exposure to OSX.
/little/ too much of a dreamer and a /little/ to little of a realist. In the end I thing the slightly upset scale is doing nothing but hurting them and their customers.
As far as accounting goes, how about we just look at the industry instead of making up numbers?
Apple is just about the only company left on the lower end where the OS and the hardware are tied togeather. And they are only barely alive. Everyone else figured it out long ago or died. Even Sun has Solaris for x86 and they are running Linux on Sparcs. Even IBM is wising up!Why can't apple?
Actually if you read todays WSJ there is an article that pretty much gives insight to why. Steve just isn't all there. That's all there is to it. He's just a
If their sales of OSX went up 10x at $120 (with 95% profit margin on materisls) then yes they would be making more money. And as I said before if they got a 20% market share using osx that could only lead to an INCREASE on properly marketed apple branded hardware as well.
First of all their current market share is closer to 2%, and frankly yes, maybe not "overnight" (Sorry about the hyperbole) but I think they actualy would have a huge chance for success considering that the mac already has a huge cache of mature and popular commercial applications for it. But considering the price difference and the availability difference for their hardware, the choice most logically falls wo wintel. If they evened the hardware playing field I believe they would be MUCH more successful.
Obviously I meant the entire thing.
At this point I completely agree. Personally I think that making the switch when the moved to OSX the first time would have been the best. Since it is as you say a "Dragging kicking and screaming" thing already, changing the processor at the same time would not have been much worse.
In fact, re-compiling an app for a new processor is HUGELY easier than porting it to a new OS which is what they are doing now moving from OS9 to OSX.
But now I think they ARE stuck until everyone is completely over to OSX and everything is humming again before they can even consider it. So... another 5 years?
I believe that they have already incorporated full DRM in their music products and an upcoming huge music announcement for some on-line music service will probably be taking full advantage of it. The about face is already happening.
The DRM question of "Will Apple have DRM" no longer exsists, but is now just "How will it be used?" is left to see.
Actually I believe that the complete opposite is true. Apples market share could go up 10x overnight if they released Mac OSX for x86. Hardware is a tough place to make money, the hardware COSTS money. Lost of it, profit margins are slim.
And even if Apple made the OS free-standing for any x86 machine, that would not stop Apple from being able to build ultra-stylish, high-priced, boutique x86 machines and put their own OS on it now would it? They'd probably sell exactly the same # of machines that way as the die hard Apple aficinados would probably still prefer to buy apple branded machines, AND it would grow their OS market share tremendously, maybe even driving their branded machine sales higher in the future.
Frankly I think not porting OSX to x86 was a huge blunder that will hold the company back another 5 years till the next actual achetecture change is forced upon them.
I don't see how your statement of making rentals equivilent to a purchase makes any sense. An electronic "rental" would cost maybe $2-3, whereas an electronic purchase might be $29 for the same DVD.
/. any pragmatic stances are so far off the "center" of the vocal /. universe that they all SEEM like flames.
Maybe after you've DLed the "rental" for $3 and watched it you might like to keep it. If so, you'll use your settop box to go back and pay an additional $27 for the full thing, put a blank DVD in the machine and burn a single copy as if you went to the store and bought it.
All of that actually sounds like a great thing! It's almost Star Trek replicator in a tiny way. And it requires DRM to work. If there is no DRM then blockbuster is never going to (or be allowed to) electronicly rent movies like that.
Linus as always strikes me as being a lot more pragmatic than most Linux "leaders". His self professed "flame" was not a flame at all! It was a pragmatic stance. But here on
Thank ghod there is a sane and rational person at the core of Linux development. It might have a chance of succeeding long term because of Linus and his "flaming" pragmatizm.
The BIOS controls the writable state of the microcode and it is always off as shipped to the consumer.
The manufacturers can burn the update on machines where it is enabled then turn the option off or move the chip to a machine where it is disabled.
Well then how about
"MozSuite"
"MozBrowser"
"MozMail"
"MozNews"
If they are just stupid prerelease code names then this entire thing is infinately more silly than I previously thought!
How about "Mozilla Lite" or better yet rename everything to:
"Mozilla Internet Suite"
and
"Mozilla Browser"
"Mozilla Mail"
"Mozilla News"
Too simple?
Too much sense?
Too easy to remember?
Not 1337 enough?
Exactly what is the problem?