What MS actually cares about is their revenue stream. You bought Windows, and they want that. But they also want you to buy the next Windows too. Their business model is all about repeat business. That's why they keep giving the users reasons to buy the next Windows. Like...not making DX10 available for XP, but only for Vista.
An example that doesn't have a reasonable technical basis would carry a bit more weight with the old "'forced' upgrade" argument.
Incidentally, pretty much _everyone's_ business model - especially in the software industry - is about "repeat business" - it's hardly something unique to Microsoft.
Sort of. But running it in a VM implies a possible different host OS. With that host OS, you might find that you like it more and use the VM just for applications that have no Mac or Linux port. You might not buy the next Windows. You might just use XP as a translation layer to run a couple of old rusty apps and stay in your new OS. Which is what they are worried about. Anything that removes users from their revenue stream is what they are worried about.
You seem to be under the impression most people run a given OS for the sake of running it. They don't. People run OSes to run certain _applications_. So long as the applications are on Windows, people will run Windows (either natively or virtualised) and Microsoft will have their "revenue stream". If the applications leave, Microsoft lose their "revenue stream" - but that is an independent issue. If people are happy to run Windows in a VM, there's little reason to think they aren't just as happy to run it on real hardware.
The proportion of the commercial market running Windows in a VM on top of some non-Windows platform "to run a couple of old rusty apps" is vanishingly small.
They do care how you use your copy. See here.
An example of normal market segmentation and price discrimination does not make for a compelling argument. Now, if they had a restriction along the lines of "you can virtualise Windows via Microsoft's virtualisation software", you might have something approaching a point.
Remember - it's their revenue stream they are trying to maintain. They do not look at a user as a single sale. A user is a stream. Buy this. Then buy this. Then buy this.
Indeed. Just like everyone else. Heck, OSS-based "commercial software" is even _more_ dependent on this principle.
my answer from a post that you didn't read: The method he's described is possible with and without copyright. But as long as there exist artistic works that would not be made but for some kind of copyright, we're better off having copyright laws.
You have still not justified your assumptions that any artistic works actually exist because of copyright and that those works provide a benefit to society great enough to outweight their reliance on copyright. Hence, your conclusion that the existence of those works provides enough benefit to society to justify the burden and negative effects of copyright law remain unsupported.
*What* negative impact of copyright? It is your obligation to list one.
Here, I'll list three:
* Copyright is a monopoly. Worse, it's a monopoly *created and enforced* by the State. Monopolies are economic bad news.
* Copyright discourages the creation of new works from artists who create successful works.
* Copyright requires non-trivial amounts of bureaucratic and legal infrastructure.
I pointed out how all examples were either a) poor implementaion of copyright (extremely excessive terms, no fair use) [...]
In a discussion of how copyright _actually_ causes problems, arguments about how it wouldn't cause problems, "but only if it's done right", are irrelevant (not to mention unsupportable).
I have theorised about a "copyright" system in the past that I consider fair, reasonable and beneficial to everyone deserving - although distributors wouldn't like it. But without any actual data I don't make any _assertions_ as to what the results would be.
[...] b) ultimately a form of "I couldn't infringe on work that required copyrgith to exist".
You have not supported your implication of a causal link between copyright and works that have delivered an overall benefit to society.
Even if you did, your argument runs up against the problem that copyright stops derivatives of works that would have existed even in the absence of copyright.
I'd appreciate not having to repeat myself to the undeserving again.
I'd appreciate it if the world wasn't full of pompous, conceited twats like you, but it's not going to happen.
I was thinking the same thing, how much more than eye candy has every release been since 95. Obviously the switch to the NT kernel was big but really the biggest difference in each release has been eye candy.
No, it hasn't. Typically the eye candy has been the _least_ significant part of OS updates (albeit the most user-visible).
Can you imagine how fast win 95 would run on an AMD Athlon 64 6000+ with a gig of ram.
Nowhere near as well as XP. Windows 95 was optimised for slow machines with very little RAM. It simply can't make good use of the extra hardware.
This is a pretty common occurrence in OS development. Early versions of Linux can't make any near as good use fo rmultiple processors and large amounts of memory as more modern versions can.
I think all of these things are slightly true - we used to care deeply about program speed and footprint. Now we don't.
Indeed. Fortunately, technology has advanced far enough so that caring about "program speed and footprint" - in most cases - is pointless. This is good, because it frees up more time to care about important things, like functionality, usability and maintainability.
Love the RAID5 stat, though... Perhaps this study will finally convince people to only use RAID for performance or huge-JBOD reasons, never for (the illusion of) reliability.
That is _not_ the conclusion anyone should take form this article.
The conclusion to be drawn is that single-parity RAID schemes cannot handle multiple drive failures in quick succession - something anyone involved in data storage should know already, and take into account.
That is, unless you go for software RAID, which will put a hit on your processor.
This myth needs to die. No remotely modern processor takes a meaningful performance hit from the processing overhead of RAID.
However, I think if you're going to make the investment to go with RAID 5, then buying a proper hardware controller won't add a significant amount to the cost of your set up.
Decent RAID5-capable controllers are hundreds of dollars. Software RAID is free and - in most cases - faster, more flexible and more reliable.
Heh. And Apple's "super slick" interface runs just fine on my three year old iBook (800Mhz G4, 640mb RAM) and I typically have >15 applications open at a time.
If you're happy with the awful performance of OSX on a G4, you'll be just as happy with Vista on a 3 year old PC.
This article has told me one thing: it's time to get a RAID setup. I've been looking at RAID 5, but two things still trouble me, the price and the performance hit. Does anyone have any information on just how much a performance hit I might experience if I have to access the HD a lot?
Ignore RAID5, go straight to RAID6 or RAID10.
With RAID10 your performance will improve. With RAID6 it will probably improve, unless your usage pattern is heavy random writes.
The I in RAID stands for Inexpensive. Solid-state drives are certainly not inexpensive (compared to a same-sized disk drive).
But that's not the comparison you need to make. You need to compare against other flash drives. Ie: Is it cheaper to buy two 16G flash drives or one 32G flash drive ? Two 32s or one 64 ? Two 64s or one 128 ? Etc.
If you're RAIDing for capacity, why not just buy a big disk drive?
Because a drive big enough mightn't be available.
If you're RAIDing for reliability, an SSD is less likely to fail mechanically, but if you're writing to the same bits to each SSD, those bits will all wear out at approximately the same time.
If you have a flash drive that your entire business depends on, and it fails, how much will that failure cost per minute ? How many minutes of downtime does it take to generate the cost of another flash drive to mirror it onto ?
If you're RAIDing for speed, SSDs are great for reading (until you max out the bus) but not too good for writing.
So, you RAID them for better write performance. There are loads out there that are very write-heavy.
You RAID Solid-state disks for _exactly_ the same reasons you RAID magnetic disks. Performance, reliability, size.
What I see as more likely is having a 20GB or so solid state drive that I boot my main operating system from. The OS itself is always running, so moving it to solid state should drastically improve system performance and boot time. Some of my more frequently used apps may be installed on the solid state too, but seldom used programs and all my data will be stored on a standard magnetic hard disk.
So the data you pull off physical disk least frequently (OS files) are on the fast disk, but the data you pull ofd physical storage the most (user files, applications) are on the slow disk ?
What ?
Why would you want to optimise the infrequent occurrence (booting) instead of the frequent occurrence (loading data files and applications) ?
But as long as there exist artistic works that would not be made but for some kind of copyright, we're better off having copyright laws.
Why ?
Then we get artists profiting through the method he's described, AND the work that requires copyright.
Ostensibly, the purpose of copyright - the reason such extraordinary protectionism is granted - is not so individual artists can profit, but so society as a whole benefits.
You need to justify your implications that a) only better works are created due to the existence of copyright; and b) those better works, on the whole, outweigh the negative impact of copyright.
If you're running your Win32/DX games on OSX, then it's an OSX machine that happens to be running Windows as a task or translation layer. The computer is not a Windows box.
That's completely irrelevant. What's important to Microsoft is that you bought a copy of Windows. Ie: that they've made their money.
MS is all about market share. Without that, they're nothing. That's why they perform stranglehold tactics on PC manufacturers, like this. If people can run to the store and buy a piece of software and run it anywhere, then what's the point of Windows?
Running a piece of software on a VM running Windows is not "running it anywhere", it's running it on Windows.
If someone is running spftware on Windows running on a VM, they're still running it on Windows and, hence, the Windows marketshare still exists.
Microsoft only really care that they sell you a copy of Windows. How you choose to use that copy is of distant secondary importance.
Most of us already own an XP disc. With no reason to buy another one, the whole Windows revenue stream dries up.
This is independent of anything related to running Windows on a VM vs real hardware.
CF bulbs already make economic sense for consumers to buy- they save a whole lot of money over their lifespan.
Only if you look long-term (years) - and the vast majority of consumers don't. They see that a new CFL bulb costs $4 and a regular old incandescent bulb costs $0.50, then buy the regular bulb and pat themselves on the back for saving $3.50 to buy some chocolate with.
Microsoft seems to be TERRIFIED of VMware (EMC). Why? Is is because VMware allows the use of Windows UNDER Linux?
No. Microsoft don't really care how you're running Windows, as long as you're running Windows.
Virtualisation is on the road to becoming a popular way to more efficiently utilise hardware resources. Whoever has the "best" virtualisation product is going to make a lot of money out of it. Microsoft want to make a lot of money.
Imagine being able to play your Windows games, but on an OSX box. Or Linux someday. It would be fantastic. Just make a VM, install your XP on that...then the game. And disconnect the virtual network card so your VM doesn't get pwned.
In all cases you've bought a copy of Windows off Microsoft. Why should they be bothered if you're running it on real hardware or virtualised hardware ?
Always keep this in mind: things are the way they are precisely because people want it that way. If they wanted things to be different, it's entirely within their power to change. All they have to do is stop being idiots for the 0.4 seconds it takes to put a check-mark in a box on a ballot slip.
Bollocks.
I have never seen a politician, anywhere, with whom I didn't strongly disagree on at least one significant issue.
But will this new strategy really keep piracy at low levels? If I know that one of my friends has a hot new track that he downloaded from a site that lets the users download MP3s, it would seem stupid(in my opinion) for someone to fork over a dollar for the track. If I can get a good from free(from the friend), why in the world would I pay for it?
Convenience.
We (at least in the first world) are living in an age of unprecented personal wealth and great laziness. People are lining up to throw away their disposable incomes on things like mobile phone ringtones, bottled water and therapists. Of course they'll be happy to spend money to buy songs online if it's quicker, easier and safer than pirating them.
2007 is the year of Linux. Vista sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1996 is the year of Linux. 95 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1997 is the year of Linux. 95 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1998 is the year of Linux. 98 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1999 is the year of Linux. 2000 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2000 is the year of Linux. 2000 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2001 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2002 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2003 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2004 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2005 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2006 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
Slashdot Mirror
What I don't get is why they don't make the user a limited user to begin with.
It is.
Administrator in Vista != Administrator on XP (or earlier)
Because it's pretty obvious at that point the author is clueless.
Then again, it's the Register. What else to expect but clueless Microsoft bashing ?
What MS actually cares about is their revenue stream. You bought Windows, and they want that. But they also want you to buy the next Windows too. Their business model is all about repeat business. That's why they keep giving the users reasons to buy the next Windows. Like...not making DX10 available for XP, but only for Vista.
An example that doesn't have a reasonable technical basis would carry a bit more weight with the old "'forced' upgrade" argument.
Incidentally, pretty much _everyone's_ business model - especially in the software industry - is about "repeat business" - it's hardly something unique to Microsoft.
Sort of. But running it in a VM implies a possible different host OS. With that host OS, you might find that you like it more and use the VM just for applications that have no Mac or Linux port. You might not buy the next Windows. You might just use XP as a translation layer to run a couple of old rusty apps and stay in your new OS. Which is what they are worried about. Anything that removes users from their revenue stream is what they are worried about.
You seem to be under the impression most people run a given OS for the sake of running it. They don't. People run OSes to run certain _applications_. So long as the applications are on Windows, people will run Windows (either natively or virtualised) and Microsoft will have their "revenue stream". If the applications leave, Microsoft lose their "revenue stream" - but that is an independent issue. If people are happy to run Windows in a VM, there's little reason to think they aren't just as happy to run it on real hardware.
The proportion of the commercial market running Windows in a VM on top of some non-Windows platform "to run a couple of old rusty apps" is vanishingly small.
They do care how you use your copy. See here.
An example of normal market segmentation and price discrimination does not make for a compelling argument. Now, if they had a restriction along the lines of "you can virtualise Windows via Microsoft's virtualisation software", you might have something approaching a point.
Remember - it's their revenue stream they are trying to maintain. They do not look at a user as a single sale. A user is a stream. Buy this. Then buy this. Then buy this.
Indeed. Just like everyone else. Heck, OSS-based "commercial software" is even _more_ dependent on this principle.
my answer from a post that you didn't read: The method he's described is possible with and without copyright. But as long as there exist artistic works that would not be made but for some kind of copyright, we're better off having copyright laws.
You have still not justified your assumptions that any artistic works actually exist because of copyright and that those works provide a benefit to society great enough to outweight their reliance on copyright. Hence, your conclusion that the existence of those works provides enough benefit to society to justify the burden and negative effects of copyright law remain unsupported.
*What* negative impact of copyright? It is your obligation to list one.
Here, I'll list three:
* Copyright is a monopoly. Worse, it's a monopoly *created and enforced* by the State. Monopolies are economic bad news.
* Copyright discourages the creation of new works from artists who create successful works.
* Copyright requires non-trivial amounts of bureaucratic and legal infrastructure.
I pointed out how all examples were either a) poor implementaion of copyright (extremely excessive terms, no fair use) [...]
In a discussion of how copyright _actually_ causes problems, arguments about how it wouldn't cause problems, "but only if it's done right", are irrelevant (not to mention unsupportable).
I have theorised about a "copyright" system in the past that I consider fair, reasonable and beneficial to everyone deserving - although distributors wouldn't like it. But without any actual data I don't make any _assertions_ as to what the results would be.
[...] b) ultimately a form of "I couldn't infringe on work that required copyrgith to exist".
You have not supported your implication of a causal link between copyright and works that have delivered an overall benefit to society.
Even if you did, your argument runs up against the problem that copyright stops derivatives of works that would have existed even in the absence of copyright.
I'd appreciate not having to repeat myself to the undeserving again.
I'd appreciate it if the world wasn't full of pompous, conceited twats like you, but it's not going to happen.
I was thinking the same thing, how much more than eye candy has every release been since 95. Obviously the switch to the NT kernel was big but really the biggest difference in each release has been eye candy.
No, it hasn't. Typically the eye candy has been the _least_ significant part of OS updates (albeit the most user-visible).
Can you imagine how fast win 95 would run on an AMD Athlon 64 6000+ with a gig of ram.
Nowhere near as well as XP. Windows 95 was optimised for slow machines with very little RAM. It simply can't make good use of the extra hardware.
This is a pretty common occurrence in OS development. Early versions of Linux can't make any near as good use fo rmultiple processors and large amounts of memory as more modern versions can.
I think all of these things are slightly true - we used to care deeply about program speed and footprint. Now we don't.
Indeed. Fortunately, technology has advanced far enough so that caring about "program speed and footprint" - in most cases - is pointless. This is good, because it frees up more time to care about important things, like functionality, usability and maintainability.
Why haven't we moved to a system where you NEVER delete?
Because disk space is a finite resource.
What's that got to do with disk reliability, anyway ?
The electronics on the hard drive rank as major players in heat generation in the boxen.
I think you'll find the spinning disks play a bigger part in the heat generation.
Love the RAID5 stat, though... Perhaps this study will finally convince people to only use RAID for performance or huge-JBOD reasons, never for (the illusion of) reliability.
That is _not_ the conclusion anyone should take form this article.
The conclusion to be drawn is that single-parity RAID schemes cannot handle multiple drive failures in quick succession - something anyone involved in data storage should know already, and take into account.
Uh sorta. Depends on the raid type. Striped will be faster, mirrored will be about as fast, raid 5 is gonna be the slowest, even in hardware.
Compared to a single disk, RAID5 is still going to be faster (except perhaps for the odd corner-case here and there).
Also, in many cases, software RAID5 is faster that hardware RAID5.
That is, unless you go for software RAID, which will put a hit on your processor.
This myth needs to die. No remotely modern processor takes a meaningful performance hit from the processing overhead of RAID.
However, I think if you're going to make the investment to go with RAID 5, then buying a proper hardware controller won't add a significant amount to the cost of your set up.
Decent RAID5-capable controllers are hundreds of dollars. Software RAID is free and - in most cases - faster, more flexible and more reliable.
Heh. And Apple's "super slick" interface runs just fine on my three year old iBook (800Mhz G4, 640mb RAM) and I typically have >15 applications open at a time.
If you're happy with the awful performance of OSX on a G4, you'll be just as happy with Vista on a 3 year old PC.
With RAID6 it will probably improve, unless your usage pattern is heavy random writes.
And even then, if your benchmark is a single drive, RAID6 will be faster.
This article has told me one thing: it's time to get a RAID setup. I've been looking at RAID 5, but two things still trouble me, the price and the performance hit. Does anyone have any information on just how much a performance hit I might experience if I have to access the HD a lot?
Ignore RAID5, go straight to RAID6 or RAID10.
With RAID10 your performance will improve. With RAID6 it will probably improve, unless your usage pattern is heavy random writes.
How about reading back to where I came into the thread, where I answered all of that?
I did. You didn't.
The I in RAID stands for Inexpensive. Solid-state drives are certainly not inexpensive (compared to a same-sized disk drive).
But that's not the comparison you need to make. You need to compare against other flash drives. Ie: Is it cheaper to buy two 16G flash drives or one 32G flash drive ? Two 32s or one 64 ? Two 64s or one 128 ? Etc.
If you're RAIDing for capacity, why not just buy a big disk drive?
Because a drive big enough mightn't be available.
If you're RAIDing for reliability, an SSD is less likely to fail mechanically, but if you're writing to the same bits to each SSD, those bits will all wear out at approximately the same time.
If you have a flash drive that your entire business depends on, and it fails, how much will that failure cost per minute ? How many minutes of downtime does it take to generate the cost of another flash drive to mirror it onto ?
If you're RAIDing for speed, SSDs are great for reading (until you max out the bus) but not too good for writing.
So, you RAID them for better write performance. There are loads out there that are very write-heavy.
You RAID Solid-state disks for _exactly_ the same reasons you RAID magnetic disks. Performance, reliability, size.
What I see as more likely is having a 20GB or so solid state drive that I boot my main operating system from. The OS itself is always running, so moving it to solid state should drastically improve system performance and boot time. Some of my more frequently used apps may be installed on the solid state too, but seldom used programs and all my data will be stored on a standard magnetic hard disk.
So the data you pull off physical disk least frequently (OS files) are on the fast disk, but the data you pull ofd physical storage the most (user files, applications) are on the slow disk ?
What ?
Why would you want to optimise the infrequent occurrence (booting) instead of the frequent occurrence (loading data files and applications) ?
But as long as there exist artistic works that would not be made but for some kind of copyright, we're better off having copyright laws.
Why ?
Then we get artists profiting through the method he's described, AND the work that requires copyright.
Ostensibly, the purpose of copyright - the reason such extraordinary protectionism is granted - is not so individual artists can profit, but so society as a whole benefits.
You need to justify your implications that a) only better works are created due to the existence of copyright; and b) those better works, on the whole, outweigh the negative impact of copyright.
If you're running your Win32/DX games on OSX, then it's an OSX machine that happens to be running Windows as a task or translation layer. The computer is not a Windows box.
That's completely irrelevant. What's important to Microsoft is that you bought a copy of Windows. Ie: that they've made their money.
MS is all about market share. Without that, they're nothing. That's why they perform stranglehold tactics on PC manufacturers, like this. If people can run to the store and buy a piece of software and run it anywhere, then what's the point of Windows?
Running a piece of software on a VM running Windows is not "running it anywhere", it's running it on Windows.
If someone is running spftware on Windows running on a VM, they're still running it on Windows and, hence, the Windows marketshare still exists.
Microsoft only really care that they sell you a copy of Windows. How you choose to use that copy is of distant secondary importance.
Most of us already own an XP disc. With no reason to buy another one, the whole Windows revenue stream dries up.
This is independent of anything related to running Windows on a VM vs real hardware.
CF bulbs already make economic sense for consumers to buy- they save a whole lot of money over their lifespan.
Only if you look long-term (years) - and the vast majority of consumers don't. They see that a new CFL bulb costs $4 and a regular old incandescent bulb costs $0.50, then buy the regular bulb and pat themselves on the back for saving $3.50 to buy some chocolate with.
Microsoft seems to be TERRIFIED of VMware (EMC). Why? Is is because VMware allows the use of Windows UNDER Linux?
No. Microsoft don't really care how you're running Windows, as long as you're running Windows.
Virtualisation is on the road to becoming a popular way to more efficiently utilise hardware resources. Whoever has the "best" virtualisation product is going to make a lot of money out of it. Microsoft want to make a lot of money.
Imagine being able to play your Windows games, but on an OSX box. Or Linux someday. It would be fantastic. Just make a VM, install your XP on that...then the game. And disconnect the virtual network card so your VM doesn't get pwned.
In all cases you've bought a copy of Windows off Microsoft. Why should they be bothered if you're running it on real hardware or virtualised hardware ?
Always keep this in mind: things are the way they are precisely because people want it that way. If they wanted things to be different, it's entirely within their power to change. All they have to do is stop being idiots for the 0.4 seconds it takes to put a check-mark in a box on a ballot slip.
Bollocks.
I have never seen a politician, anywhere, with whom I didn't strongly disagree on at least one significant issue.
But will this new strategy really keep piracy at low levels? If I know that one of my friends has a hot new track that he downloaded from a site that lets the users download MP3s, it would seem stupid(in my opinion) for someone to fork over a dollar for the track. If I can get a good from free(from the friend), why in the world would I pay for it?
Convenience.
We (at least in the first world) are living in an age of unprecented personal wealth and great laziness. People are lining up to throw away their disposable incomes on things like mobile phone ringtones, bottled water and therapists. Of course they'll be happy to spend money to buy songs online if it's quicker, easier and safer than pirating them.
2007 is the year of Linux. Vista sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1996 is the year of Linux. 95 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1997 is the year of Linux. 95 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1998 is the year of Linux. 98 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
1999 is the year of Linux. 2000 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2000 is the year of Linux. 2000 sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2001 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2002 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2003 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2004 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2005 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
2006 is the year of Linux. XP sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!