I'm guessing that the Intel iBooks will mostly fit the bill for what you're looking for, but there is no way that it'll support 4GB of RAM, and I really doubt that the Ibook will sport 128MB of VRAM. Apple needs to differntiate between it's iBook and PowerBook models, and I'm guessing that the extra main and video RAM that you're looking for would be reserved for the PowerBooks.
I would hope that - given there are PC notebooks available *today* with 256MB of VRAM, combined with OS X's VRAM-greediness - that by the time x86 i/PowerBooks are released (and it's likely to be Q4 2006) that we'll be looking at 128MB in the iBook and 256 or even 512 in the PB. (Ironically, however, despite having the only OS that actually makes use of modern GPU features they have had a tendency to use pretty low-powered video configurations (eg: putting a video card in the Mini that couldn't handle CoreImage was just a great, big, juicy "fuck you, cheapskate" to everyone who bought one - Steve must have loved it.)
OTOH, Apple have a long and glorious history of arbitrarily and frustratingly limiting their hardware - particularly at the consumer level - to "encourage" people to buy more expensive products, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a measly 64MB in the x86 iBook.
Dunno, I see things like this Mac Mini clone selling for more than a Mini ($900 for the clone vs. $600 for the Mini), and I have to wonder.
You have to keep in mind that machine will spank a $600 Mac Mini in almost all aspects of performance (except video, but that's really a case of damnation with faint praise). It's nearly impossible to buy PCs as slow as the G4 Macs these days.
IMHO, this is the price point Apple should have targeted with the Mini, and made it a low-clocked G5 (1.4Ghz or so) with a better video card. Basically they should have made it a headless iMac (people like me have been asking for one of them since the original iMac). G4 Macs are dogs running OS X, mainly due to the massive memory and bus speed bottleneck. I know I would have bought a G5 Mini.
I think that Apple will pick up the economies of scale from the x86 component vendors and run with it. Sure, they'll still set a 30%+ profit margin, but I imagine they'll save enough money that prices should be "roughly" comparable. C.f. the Dell XPS systems, which seem to have a solid following despite their price premium.
I think (hope !) they'll simply benefit from having a wider range of (much) better performing hardware. For example, it's clear the Mini was made a G4 primarily to differentiate it from the G5 "Pro" (sumer|fessional) class desktops and that the smaller form factor this allowed flowed on from that. In the PC world, however, even the low end chips and supporting hardware are substantially faster than the G4s.
I can't see Macs getting any cheaper. They're not expensive because they cost appreciably more to make, they're expensive because Apple are a premium supplier. That's not going to change just because it's an x86 chip instead of a PowerPC.
And your comparison is great if the form factor is more important to you than anything else.
If it isn't - if you can handle having a bigger case - then only about $60 more will buy you a Dell Dimension 3000 with substantially better performance in almost every area *and* a 17" LCD.
Have you not looked at Mac prices in a while? Current Macs run 2-10X more expensive than comparable PCs.
This is not really true - at least not for G5-based Macs (it's hard, if not impossible - and has been for a few years - to find mainstream PCs as slow as the G4-based machines, so they're difficult to compare). They're definitely more expensive, but not that much. The problems with Macs are more:
* You need a relatively powerful Mac to get any sort of decent performance out of OS X for non-trivial workloads. At least a G5 and preferably one with a good video card.
* Those Macs *are* relatively expensive. It's possible to get quite reasonable performance out of a relatively cheap, "low end" PC, but using OS X on anything with a G4 processor with more than a couple of things running is like wading through a swamp. The cheapest G5 Mac is the 17" iMac, which here in Australia is $2000, whereas something like a Dell 5150 is only about $1400 (and that's with a free printer). This is a problem for first time/novice and/or "low end" customers.
* Macs tend to have extremely annoying hardware limitations. For example, you can't buy one of those brand-spanking new "Quad G5" PowerMacs with a relatively small hard disk and/or weak video card (have to get 250G and a 6600), nor can you get a G5 iMac with a relatively high end video chipset like an x800 in it (to say nothing of only one user-accessible memory slot). This is a problem for experience and/or "high end" consumers.
* Aftermarket replacements/upgrades for some hardware - particularly video cards - are expensive and of limited availability.
To put it more bluntly, the "minium buy in" for decent Mac is substantially higher than a PC and there's nothing even close to the flexibility of buying a PC (even at the high end). Added to that is the assumption that any Mac you buy is "self-contained" - either completely replacing any existing hardware or a first computer purchase.
I'm eagerly awaiting the x86 Macs. I'm hoping Apple will use the access to much better performing hardware across the board to finally make their lower-end machines more competitive (in terms of speed). I would have bought a Mini to mostly replace my PC if they'd made it a G5 (even an underclocked one at something like 1.4Ghz) - but there's no way I'd buy a G4 desktop.
I won't trust the security of a M$ OS until the source is opened. (Note I don't mean open source, just that the source is available to all for peer review, even if full copy and distrobution rights are maintained).
Considering how few security breaches have anything to do with coding problems, I think that's a pretty ridiculous measure.
Hitler was evil. Pol Pot was evil. Stalin was evil.
Microsoft is a standard business operation. Hell, they're not even towards the "bad" end of that scale like, say, Nike, Nestle or De Beers are.
(Although, at least by calling Microsoft "evil" you demonstrate how small the pinhole through which you view the world is, and warn others of your incredibly insulated existence.)
Ok, that's your opinion. I however beleive that they have only copied and stolen products without any real innovation.
So, by your measure, who has innovated ? And how ?
Microsoft is a monopoly and does not innovate. I have shown multiple examples of this.
Who does ? How ? What's your definition of "innovation" ? It's impossible to have any sort of rational discussion on the topic without knowing where the goalposts are.
Microsoft will buy or copy things that are truly innovative and then try to rewrite history as if they were their own all of history.
Where do they do this ? Have you got any examples of Microsoft buying a product or technology and then trying to claim they did it all themselves ?
Their contribution to modern computing is to have ridden the wave of cheap commodity PCs that needed a GUI to run them.
"Helped is the word your after. "Microsoft" and "cheap commodity PCs" have a symbiotic relationship. Both fed off the success of the other.
People are now afraid of computers, paranoid of being on the Internet, and have been convinced that it's normal to require anti-virus and anti-spyware software as a layer between you and the applications you run.
What's funny is that you think the situation would have been any different if MacOS, AmigaOS or anything else had captured 95% of the userbase.
People are scared of trying to program their TVs, VCRs and Microwaves as well. You really think a PC without Windows on it would be any less intimidating ?
Be nice to have some real competition versus Linux/OS X in terms of architecture. XP/2003 just aren't there. Vista won't be, most likely.
Architecturally, NT is better than both Linux and OS X.
Release of a non-Win32 based OS, one that runs older applications (either desktop OR server) in emulation validates Linux/OS with QEMU/Virtual PC/VMware/Xen/Whatever.
Except that Microsoft would expend a great deal of effort to make the emulation transparent, seamless and easy to use. It's doubtful the same would be true from the OSS community.
It'll be significantly harder for MS to push towards a non-Windows MS operating system.
Not if it runs existing applications relatively seamlessly, it won't.
Every single CIO willing to consider moving from Windows will be willing to consider moving to Linux/OS X/whatever instead.
Assuming they can provide similar functionality and performance at a competitive price. This is far from a given.
Uh, no. I'm not an OS expert, but I beleive NT 3.1 kept drivers in a seperate protection ring from the kernel (much like OS/2) so that 3rd party drivers couldn't crash the kernel. Since this was incredibly slow due to constant context switches between drivers and kernels, for NT 3.5 Microsoft made the concious desision to make the OS less reliable by putting the drivers in the same protection ring as the kernel to improve speed. As far as I know, subsequent MS OSes have kept this same trade-off, allowing drivers to corrupt the system in order to improve performance.
* OS/2 didn't do this.
* The switchover with NT's driver model you are talking about happened with NT4 (so 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 were the more microkernel-ish implementation). The primary reason behind it was display driver performance.
* Microsoft have been trying to get back to a more microkernel-ish design over the years (as hardware performance has improved so dramatically), although most stuff still runs in ring 0.
One metric of a good product is how well it initially sells, and all that's happening here is Microsoft falsifying that metric.
I dunno if I'd call that a very good metric. After all, how consumers know how good a product they've never used is ? I would have thought *long term* sales figures would be far more indicative of a "good product".
For the exact same reasons that I prefer the GPL to every other open source license. If you release code under a BSD-ish license, Microsoft can co-opt your work into a proprietary product directly without playing the same open source game that you are.
There are plenty of other Open Source licenses that avoid this. The LGPL, for example.
because those pesky users like to have access to their server. If you take the server out of the client-server equation the client is NEVER happy. Often, companies are only paid when their server is up. Even if they aren't, companies who host servers don't stay in business very long if their servers go down all the time.
Server and service uptime are not necessarily the same thing.
In a well-designed architecture, individual server uptimes are irrelevant.
Why, when Microsoft can force people to adopt new "standards" just by releasing a new version of Word, [...]
Here is t he flawed assumption that leads to:
[...] they can't force software companies to create software for Windows that doesn't rely on the assumption of administrator privileges is beyond me.
Because they can't. If they could, they would have half a decade or more ago. Despite what posters on Slashdot might have you believe, every new version of Office doesn't require extensive user retraining or break every existing document.
Would it be so hard to say that you only use the administrator account for installing shared (amongst all local users) software?
Yes. It's intrusive andnon-transparent. Hell, people gripe about having to type in a password every now and then running OS X, you think they'll be happy having to switch accounts to install stuff ?
The Windows version of a ~ directory is already in place (documents and settings).
Just to *really* drive this point home, Windows NT has been multiuser since the day it was released (back in 1993) and even DOS-based Windows has had the necessary APIs and disk/registry structures to support "multiuser aware" application installs since about 1997.
There is *no-one* to blame except developers for any applications released in the last 6 - 7 years that _requires_ administrator privileges to run.
What's stopping MS from implementing a Unix-style security model?
Windows NT has always had a security model far superior to the "unix style" one.
About heterogeneity, it would be nice to see if the "attacked because it is the most used" argument of MS Windows holds here. IIRC Aol IM is the most widley used messenger. Which one will get more viruses?? AIM? or MSNM? place your bets!
Settle down there, tiger. There's a *substantial* difference between applying the "market share" (really, "critical mass") logic to a product that holds ~95% of the market to one that only holds about 50% of the market. Particularly when people are typically using the "market share" reasoning with Windows to imply other important factors, like userbase demographics.
As long as the government makes clear that they are doing so as a last resort only because Microsoft is refusing to sell any product at all in the S.K. [...]
Yeah, I can really see that making all the difference.
1. SK Corp lobbies SK Government to find !SK Corp in breach of $SOME_LAW
2. !SK Corp decides its cheaper to simply pull out of SK rather than comply with $SOME_LAW
3. SK Government declares !SK Corp's "intellectual property" is now "public domain"
4. SK Corp (from #1) develops identical product from newly-public-domain'ed "intellectual property".
(5. Profit !)
[...] I doubt most companies would have the reaction that you think they would. Most of them will just think that Microsoft was being arrogant & unreasonable [...]
I doubt it. Most of them probably think Microsoft is faced with unreasonable demands and is reacting quite reasonably (from a business perspective). After all, Microsoft are just saying "it's not economically feasible for us to modify Windows XP, and Windows Vista will require modification to meet the necessary requirements, delaying its release to the South Korean market by the time taken to make those modifications".
[...] and enjoy the chance to compete in a lucrative market without having to worry about the presence of Microsoft's competition-crushing financial tactics.
I think them concentrating on actually trying to make a better product instead of whining for government neutering of competitor's products would be a better result for consumers.
Still, at some point in the near future I think the IP industry is going to have to do _something_ to adapt to a more reasonable approach. China & the similar regional markets don't have anywhere near the cultural respect for IP laws that seem to be part of the Western mindset, and they are in a similar historical growth situation that the U.S. was during the Industrial Revolution.
It's got nothing to do with "culture" and everything to do with economics. Interestingly, you go on to explain this, even after attributing it to "culture":).
[...] it is almost inevitable that China will become the economic powerhouse of the world, while the so-called First World countries will become economic has-been backwaters.
For a while, but eventually Chinese industry will have to start coming up with its own ideas, instead of copying others'. Then IP laws will become just as draconian in China as they are today in the western world.
The most interesting thing to consider, is whether or not the western world will have an economic meltdown before that happens. I don't think it will, because while China is a big economy - and will continue to grow - is it really going to get bigger than the rest of the world ?
When was the last time a OS X update broke my machine?
Your machine ? No idea. Never, by the sound of it.
Other people's machines ? Ridiculously often, given how small their product line is.
When a Windows service pack breaks 5% of the machines it gets installed on, that's understandable because of the millions of different hardware combinations out there.
When OS X updates break stock standard Mac configurations - and it's happened several times in the past - it's ridiculous.
Not according to the findings of fact they aren't.
Just because your computer uses a different chip doesnt mean its not a computer, same with OS. Thats like saying that Ford and VW arnt in the same market because none of their parts work in each others cars.
I agree completely. However, the fact remains that Microsoft were found to be a monopoly of the "intel compatible operating systems market", one that Apple doesn't even offer a product in, let alone competition.
Indeed, if Apple really *were* in the same market as Microsoft, there's no way they could have been found a monopoly - not with such an easily available, practically drop-in alternative on the market.
Telemarketing is a shitty job that no one really wants to do. I did it when I was in college because I needed the cash. Did I go whistling to work just hoping I could annoy some people at home? No.
Mate, that's pretty desparate for cash. Why didn't you choose something relatively respectable, like drug pusher or illegal immigrant sweatshop overseer ?
Actually its kinda the other way around. Its a very well know fact that Microsoft only invested in Apple back in the day around when Jobs came back BECAUSE if Apple was gone, Microsoft was dead from a monopoly standpoint. Apple is Microsofts answer when DoJ tells Microsoft they are a monopoly.
Apple and Microsoft - at least as far as the antitrust trial and DOJ are concerned - do not compete in the same market (although when x86 Macs ar e released they'll be somewhat closer than they are now).
By effectively telling every corporation in the world that South Korea is a market to avoid for any products dependent on IP law to have value (which is a *lot* of them). The "economic meltdown" comes when corporate investment starts rapidly migrating out of the South Korean economy.
All other companies would be perfectly free to protect their own IP, [...]
Sure, right up until the South Korean government decides it's their turn to be stripped of their "intellectual property" rights.
It's pretty funny how so many of my respondents are so absolutely sure that such a move would hurt S.K. more than it would hurt Microsoft [...]
Of course it would. Microsoft plays in a global market, and South Korea is but a single country.
IP isn't a "real" product. It has potential value as a product only because governments enforce artificial scarcity.
Nevertheless, *billions* of dollars of economic activity hinge on the principals of "intellectual property". Much as I like to dream of world sans IP laws, it's not ever going to happen without a massive global upheaval.
If a host government doesn't enforce that artificial scarcity, then there's not a damn thing that a company that depends totally on IP for its income can do about it.
Which is precisely why every corporation that could would get the hell out of any country whose government decided they weren't going to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
I would hope that - given there are PC notebooks available *today* with 256MB of VRAM, combined with OS X's VRAM-greediness - that by the time x86 i/PowerBooks are released (and it's likely to be Q4 2006) that we'll be looking at 128MB in the iBook and 256 or even 512 in the PB. (Ironically, however, despite having the only OS that actually makes use of modern GPU features they have had a tendency to use pretty low-powered video configurations (eg: putting a video card in the Mini that couldn't handle CoreImage was just a great, big, juicy "fuck you, cheapskate" to everyone who bought one - Steve must have loved it.)
OTOH, Apple have a long and glorious history of arbitrarily and frustratingly limiting their hardware - particularly at the consumer level - to "encourage" people to buy more expensive products, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a measly 64MB in the x86 iBook.
You have to keep in mind that machine will spank a $600 Mac Mini in almost all aspects of performance (except video, but that's really a case of damnation with faint praise). It's nearly impossible to buy PCs as slow as the G4 Macs these days.
IMHO, this is the price point Apple should have targeted with the Mini, and made it a low-clocked G5 (1.4Ghz or so) with a better video card. Basically they should have made it a headless iMac (people like me have been asking for one of them since the original iMac). G4 Macs are dogs running OS X, mainly due to the massive memory and bus speed bottleneck. I know I would have bought a G5 Mini.
I think that Apple will pick up the economies of scale from the x86 component vendors and run with it. Sure, they'll still set a 30%+ profit margin, but I imagine they'll save enough money that prices should be "roughly" comparable. C.f. the Dell XPS systems, which seem to have a solid following despite their price premium.
I think (hope !) they'll simply benefit from having a wider range of (much) better performing hardware. For example, it's clear the Mini was made a G4 primarily to differentiate it from the G5 "Pro" (sumer|fessional) class desktops and that the smaller form factor this allowed flowed on from that. In the PC world, however, even the low end chips and supporting hardware are substantially faster than the G4s.
I can't see Macs getting any cheaper. They're not expensive because they cost appreciably more to make, they're expensive because Apple are a premium supplier. That's not going to change just because it's an x86 chip instead of a PowerPC.
And your comparison is great if the form factor is more important to you than anything else.
If it isn't - if you can handle having a bigger case - then only about $60 more will buy you a Dell Dimension 3000 with substantially better performance in almost every area *and* a 17" LCD.
This is not really true - at least not for G5-based Macs (it's hard, if not impossible - and has been for a few years - to find mainstream PCs as slow as the G4-based machines, so they're difficult to compare). They're definitely more expensive, but not that much. The problems with Macs are more:
* You need a relatively powerful Mac to get any sort of decent performance out of OS X for non-trivial workloads. At least a G5 and preferably one with a good video card.
* Those Macs *are* relatively expensive. It's possible to get quite reasonable performance out of a relatively cheap, "low end" PC, but using OS X on anything with a G4 processor with more than a couple of things running is like wading through a swamp. The cheapest G5 Mac is the 17" iMac, which here in Australia is $2000, whereas something like a Dell 5150 is only about $1400 (and that's with a free printer). This is a problem for first time/novice and/or "low end" customers.
* Macs tend to have extremely annoying hardware limitations. For example, you can't buy one of those brand-spanking new "Quad G5" PowerMacs with a relatively small hard disk and/or weak video card (have to get 250G and a 6600), nor can you get a G5 iMac with a relatively high end video chipset like an x800 in it (to say nothing of only one user-accessible memory slot). This is a problem for experience and/or "high end" consumers.
* Aftermarket replacements/upgrades for some hardware - particularly video cards - are expensive and of limited availability.
To put it more bluntly, the "minium buy in" for decent Mac is substantially higher than a PC and there's nothing even close to the flexibility of buying a PC (even at the high end). Added to that is the assumption that any Mac you buy is "self-contained" - either completely replacing any existing hardware or a first computer purchase.
I'm eagerly awaiting the x86 Macs. I'm hoping Apple will use the access to much better performing hardware across the board to finally make their lower-end machines more competitive (in terms of speed). I would have bought a Mini to mostly replace my PC if they'd made it a G5 (even an underclocked one at something like 1.4Ghz) - but there's no way I'd buy a G4 desktop.
Considering how few security breaches have anything to do with coding problems, I think that's a pretty ridiculous measure.
For fuck's sake.
Hitler was evil. Pol Pot was evil. Stalin was evil.
Microsoft is a standard business operation. Hell, they're not even towards the "bad" end of that scale like, say, Nike, Nestle or De Beers are.
(Although, at least by calling Microsoft "evil" you demonstrate how small the pinhole through which you view the world is, and warn others of your incredibly insulated existence.)
So, by your measure, who has innovated ? And how ?
Microsoft is a monopoly and does not innovate. I have shown multiple examples of this.
Who does ? How ? What's your definition of "innovation" ? It's impossible to have any sort of rational discussion on the topic without knowing where the goalposts are.
Microsoft will buy or copy things that are truly innovative and then try to rewrite history as if they were their own all of history.
Where do they do this ? Have you got any examples of Microsoft buying a product or technology and then trying to claim they did it all themselves ?
Their contribution to modern computing is to have ridden the wave of cheap commodity PCs that needed a GUI to run them.
"Helped is the word your after. "Microsoft" and "cheap commodity PCs" have a symbiotic relationship. Both fed off the success of the other.
People are now afraid of computers, paranoid of being on the Internet, and have been convinced that it's normal to require anti-virus and anti-spyware software as a layer between you and the applications you run.
What's funny is that you think the situation would have been any different if MacOS, AmigaOS or anything else had captured 95% of the userbase.
People are scared of trying to program their TVs, VCRs and Microwaves as well. You really think a PC without Windows on it would be any less intimidating ?
Architecturally, NT is better than both Linux and OS X.
Release of a non-Win32 based OS, one that runs older applications (either desktop OR server) in emulation validates Linux/OS with QEMU/Virtual PC/VMware/Xen/Whatever.
Except that Microsoft would expend a great deal of effort to make the emulation transparent, seamless and easy to use. It's doubtful the same would be true from the OSS community.
It'll be significantly harder for MS to push towards a non-Windows MS operating system.
Not if it runs existing applications relatively seamlessly, it won't.
Every single CIO willing to consider moving from Windows will be willing to consider moving to Linux/OS X/whatever instead.
Assuming they can provide similar functionality and performance at a competitive price. This is far from a given.
* OS/2 didn't do this.
* The switchover with NT's driver model you are talking about happened with NT4 (so 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 were the more microkernel-ish implementation). The primary reason behind it was display driver performance.
* Microsoft have been trying to get back to a more microkernel-ish design over the years (as hardware performance has improved so dramatically), although most stuff still runs in ring 0.
I dunno if I'd call that a very good metric. After all, how consumers know how good a product they've never used is ? I would have thought *long term* sales figures would be far more indicative of a "good product".
There are plenty of other Open Source licenses that avoid this. The LGPL, for example.
Figuring out WTF you need to use as "application_name".
Server and service uptime are not necessarily the same thing.
In a well-designed architecture, individual server uptimes are irrelevant.
Here is t he flawed assumption that leads to:
[...] they can't force software companies to create software for Windows that doesn't rely on the assumption of administrator privileges is beyond me.
Because they can't. If they could, they would have half a decade or more ago. Despite what posters on Slashdot might have you believe, every new version of Office doesn't require extensive user retraining or break every existing document.
Would it be so hard to say that you only use the administrator account for installing shared (amongst all local users) software?
Yes. It's intrusive andnon-transparent. Hell, people gripe about having to type in a password every now and then running OS X, you think they'll be happy having to switch accounts to install stuff ?
The Windows version of a ~ directory is already in place (documents and settings).
Just to *really* drive this point home, Windows NT has been multiuser since the day it was released (back in 1993) and even DOS-based Windows has had the necessary APIs and disk/registry structures to support "multiuser aware" application installs since about 1997.
There is *no-one* to blame except developers for any applications released in the last 6 - 7 years that _requires_ administrator privileges to run.
What's stopping MS from implementing a Unix-style security model?
Windows NT has always had a security model far superior to the "unix style" one.
Settle down there, tiger. There's a *substantial* difference between applying the "market share" (really, "critical mass") logic to a product that holds ~95% of the market to one that only holds about 50% of the market. Particularly when people are typically using the "market share" reasoning with Windows to imply other important factors, like userbase demographics.
No, both are quite specific it's the *GPL* they don't like, not Open Source in general.
Yeah, I can really see that making all the difference.
1. SK Corp lobbies SK Government to find !SK Corp in breach of $SOME_LAW
2. !SK Corp decides its cheaper to simply pull out of SK rather than comply with $SOME_LAW
3. SK Government declares !SK Corp's "intellectual property" is now "public domain"
4. SK Corp (from #1) develops identical product from newly-public-domain'ed "intellectual property".
(5. Profit !)
[...] I doubt most companies would have the reaction that you think they would. Most of them will just think that Microsoft was being arrogant & unreasonable [...]
I doubt it. Most of them probably think Microsoft is faced with unreasonable demands and is reacting quite reasonably (from a business perspective). After all, Microsoft are just saying "it's not economically feasible for us to modify Windows XP, and Windows Vista will require modification to meet the necessary requirements, delaying its release to the South Korean market by the time taken to make those modifications".
[...] and enjoy the chance to compete in a lucrative market without having to worry about the presence of Microsoft's competition-crushing financial tactics.
I think them concentrating on actually trying to make a better product instead of whining for government neutering of competitor's products would be a better result for consumers.
Still, at some point in the near future I think the IP industry is going to have to do _something_ to adapt to a more reasonable approach. China & the similar regional markets don't have anywhere near the cultural respect for IP laws that seem to be part of the Western mindset, and they are in a similar historical growth situation that the U.S. was during the Industrial Revolution.
It's got nothing to do with "culture" and everything to do with economics. Interestingly, you go on to explain this, even after attributing it to "culture" :).
[...] it is almost inevitable that China will become the economic powerhouse of the world, while the so-called First World countries will become economic has-been backwaters.
For a while, but eventually Chinese industry will have to start coming up with its own ideas, instead of copying others'. Then IP laws will become just as draconian in China as they are today in the western world.
The most interesting thing to consider, is whether or not the western world will have an economic meltdown before that happens. I don't think it will, because while China is a big economy - and will continue to grow - is it really going to get bigger than the rest of the world ?
Your machine ? No idea. Never, by the sound of it.
Other people's machines ? Ridiculously often, given how small their product line is.
When a Windows service pack breaks 5% of the machines it gets installed on, that's understandable because of the millions of different hardware combinations out there.
When OS X updates break stock standard Mac configurations - and it's happened several times in the past - it's ridiculous.
Not according to the findings of fact they aren't.
Just because your computer uses a different chip doesnt mean its not a computer, same with OS. Thats like saying that Ford and VW arnt in the same market because none of their parts work in each others cars.
I agree completely. However, the fact remains that Microsoft were found to be a monopoly of the "intel compatible operating systems market", one that Apple doesn't even offer a product in, let alone competition.
Indeed, if Apple really *were* in the same market as Microsoft, there's no way they could have been found a monopoly - not with such an easily available, practically drop-in alternative on the market.
Mate, that's pretty desparate for cash. Why didn't you choose something relatively respectable, like drug pusher or illegal immigrant sweatshop overseer ?
Apple and Microsoft - at least as far as the antitrust trial and DOJ are concerned - do not compete in the same market (although when x86 Macs ar e released they'll be somewhat closer than they are now).
There is no distinction, except in the minds of creationists.
By effectively telling every corporation in the world that South Korea is a market to avoid for any products dependent on IP law to have value (which is a *lot* of them). The "economic meltdown" comes when corporate investment starts rapidly migrating out of the South Korean economy.
All other companies would be perfectly free to protect their own IP, [...]
Sure, right up until the South Korean government decides it's their turn to be stripped of their "intellectual property" rights.
It's pretty funny how so many of my respondents are so absolutely sure that such a move would hurt S.K. more than it would hurt Microsoft [...]
Of course it would. Microsoft plays in a global market, and South Korea is but a single country.
IP isn't a "real" product. It has potential value as a product only because governments enforce artificial scarcity.
Nevertheless, *billions* of dollars of economic activity hinge on the principals of "intellectual property". Much as I like to dream of world sans IP laws, it's not ever going to happen without a massive global upheaval.
If a host government doesn't enforce that artificial scarcity, then there's not a damn thing that a company that depends totally on IP for its income can do about it.
Which is precisely why every corporation that could would get the hell out of any country whose government decided they weren't going to do so.
In most cases, spyware gets installed through the actions of the end user. Not much they can do to close that "hole".