Sony actually has a lot of technological achievements in its history. And they have led the industy in a few things -- like the Walkman and the Compact Disc.
Sony produced the first commercially successful transistor radio. They invented the Walkman category. The Trinitron CRT tube was generally regarded as the best picture tube for decades. They seriously advanced the state of the art graphics with the PlayStation and PS2. And ATRAC and MP3 were apparently developed at the same time. So there's been quite a bit of innovation from Sony.
Sony has also been good at technology implementation. Their Betamax standard was actually a better technology than VHS. That line of technology was actually used by TV studios for years, in higher-end components. But you are right about one thing -- they still haven't really learned their lesson about proprietary formats from Betamax.
The MiniDisc format was not completely proprietary. It was developed by Sony, but licensed to nearly all of the major audio equipment companies. Over 20 manufacturers made MD players and records.
Re:Not a cop-out, just a fact
on
The CVS Cop-Out
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I think you're spot on. I have a hard time understanding how the original poster expects the developers to fix something that they've already fixed.
Personally, I find it GREAT that most of the time I find a bug, it's already been found and fixed. So I might have to wait a while before the next release. But if I need the fix badly enough, I can just grab the CVS version. Or grab the patch. Really, I find that there's a lot of flexibility -- instead of waiting and hoping that the vendor fixes my problem, and begging them for a patch, or buying the upgrade.
Hmm. I had first considered the Lao Tzu quote to be somewhat accurate. But your point actually fits in quite nicely with what Jared Diamond (among others) has to say about the rise of civilization and the political classes. His basic premise is that when people got skilled enough to produce food with lots of time left over, they could develop things such as written language, politicians, and militaries. And the fact that Western culture was able to produce food more effectively lead to them having a big head-start with their military, leaving us with the current Western-controlled planet.
Like many things, there are actually existing laws to do this -- they're just never enforced. To apply for a patent, you have to sign a statement under penalty of perjury that you are the true inventor and have disclosed all information you know that would be relevant to the examination of the application. Bruce Perens has suggested we start enforcing this more. But there are quite a few difficulties with this.
One of the most difficult issues is proving that the submitor knew that what he submitted was obvious to anyone. If we could lower the requirements to say that if it's obvious to someone skilled in the art, then there would be a presumption of guilt. That would help, but has some constitutional issues. Your idea of an administrative fee might help, but I don't think it would help much, since you'd have to have really large fees to effect large companies.
When I find something I'm looking for, I keep looking -- sometimes in case I might come across a better result, and sometimes just disprove that silly saying.
You might not be a security expert, but you've LISTENED to security experts, and you are following better security practices than 95% of the home users out there. (Probably better than 80% of the companies out there. Heck, probably better than 50% of the security professionals out there.) By using Firefox and a NAT router, you've reduced your attack surface by probably 90%. Keeping your software up to date, and running scans adds probably another 9%.
You're definitely an educated user, doing the right thing. And perhaps you provide good evidence that the majority of posters here are right -- it's not the security professionals who are at fault. But why is it that we can't convince more people to be as conscientious as you? Why can't we make it even easier?
Looking at my first paragraph, I think I have to place the blame squarely on Microsoft. I'm not typically a Microsoft basher. I think they do a lot of things well, but like anything, there are a lot of problems as well. (And I generally prefer Linux, although I do prefer Microsoft Office apps.) But it's Windows and IE's "insecure by design" that's really at fault. Why should a Windows client have any ports open by default? Or at least without asking if I want to open them during the installation wizards.
I went to a presentation last night on web application vulnerability/penetration testing. They said that they are able to gain full access to about 40% of the web apps they test. And by full access, they mean access to system accounts and arbitrary database read/write. Incredible. Mostly due to programmers not validating input.
So while I agree that security professionals are doing a lot, and largely being ignored, I think that we need to make it clear why and how things need to change. Largely, I think this will mainly require treating security as a process involving people, not as technological products.
I've often said that Debian is the Linux of Linux distros. In other words, it's built very much in the same way that Linux is. No one entity owns it, it has a very distributed and open development process, and it's "more free" than most of the other popular alternatives. So I think in the end, Debian will be at least the basis for the majority of GNU/Linux deployments.
That said, I'm not sure what the Microsoft of Linux even means.
If he means having control of Linux, then I think he's right. A single company having significant control of GNU/Linux would be a bad thing, because it would imply less control for users and customers. And I think control is the real reason why so many people and companies have moved to Linux and Open Source.
If the Microsoft of Linux means having a large market share of commercial Linux deployments, then I think that could be OK. Although I wouldn't expect it to ever get to 90%. For one, I expect the no-cost GNU/Linux distros to remain popular. (Or at least one of them.)
If it means THE company that people turn to when they need Linux expertise, Red Hat was close to being that a few years ago. I saw that as a positive; I'm sorry to see that they've lost a lot of that prestige, relative to other Linux companies.
Anyway, I don't think there will ever be another Microsoft. Just like there will never be another Beatles, despite what had been predicted about the New Kids on the Block, or any other band. The ingredients for their creation within society as a whole just don't exist anymore.
This just in -- $300 product is better than free competitor!
Um, yeah. Of course it is. It's been around a lot longer, and it's had a ton more money put into it. Why would you expect anything different? But it's relatively very expensive, and nobody but Microsoft has much control over it.
There aren't a lot of people jumping from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice because OpenOffice is a lot better. They're moving because it's a lot cheaper, and it lets them control their own destiny.
The OpenDocument format is very much about allowing users to control their destiny, by allowing anyone to easily access the content of their files without being beholden to any one company. (And that will likely lead to positive results in the competitive market, driving down prices.)
I'm greatly in favor of OpenDocument. But I actually like Word and Excel, and whenever I have an employer paying for my copy, I'm happy to use it. I'm very interested in the ODF plugin for Microsoft Office. I'd much rather have a standards-compliant format that's easy for me to manipulate with a wide variety of tools. That's what ODF is about.
As far as disabled people's access, they are right to complain about OpenOffice and the other ODF apps. But like anyone else complaining about Open Source software, they need to contribute to help fix the situation. In the meantime, I don't see any harm in them continuing to use Microsoft Office. It's still a better situation than using MS Office without ODF. And eventually, the Open Source programs will improve their accessibility.
Minix has always been a microkernel, as far as I know. It was back in 1992 that Tannenbaum argued with Linus that a monolithic kernel was the wrong way to go. Had Minix had a more flexible license and maintainer, there's a decent chance that it would have gone on to do what Linux did.
Good points on the I/O versus system calls and caching. Your work load does not sound typical to me though.
I would guess that in an ideal world, we'd want to choose monolithic versus micro-kernels for various different tasks. For your case, it sounds like performance is more important than security. So a monolithic kernel would probably be best. But I think most tasks would be better off with more security, at the expense of some performance.
I'd also point out that there are some microkernels out there that don't seem to have any performance penalty. QNX is probably the best example. I'm not sure about L4, but it probably has better performance characteristics than Mach, and Linux runs on top of it. Someone also mentioned that BeOS had a microkernel, and performed very well.
Most people buying PCs these days DO NOT care about speed. Heck, they don't even know what a MHz is. They get a slightly faster CPU because that's what the salesman tells them they need, or is a better value. (I typically recommend around 2nd from the bottom, in the theory that it will last longer than the cheapest choice.) I mean, a lot of people are just running Word and Excel. They were perfectly happy with their 800 MHz Pentium III, and the code didn't get 3 times slower. Hard drive and network performance are the more likely limiting factors in today's use cases.
Even for servers, I/O is usually more important for performance. Your point about CPU caches shows that memory latency is typically a bigger bottleneck than raw CPU speed. If the CPU were the bottleneck, how would adding cache help? How often is your CPU running at 100%? How long does it run at 100%?
Apologies for not making a joke on the name, like every other post so far...
I'm confused about these new CPUs. I know the Core is based off the Pentium M, and the Core 2 uses a new micro-architecture, also based primarily off the Pentium M, as well as the Pentium III. My question is -- is the Core 2 a direct-line descendent from the Core? Or is the Core 2 the first to use the new micro-architecture, with the Core the last direct-line descendent of the Pentium M?
If you were right, nobody would buy anything except the top-speed CPUs. If you look at what people are buying, they tend to be more middle-of-the-road or low-end CPUs. So I think your argument falls down.
I'd also note that Intel's latest Core CPUs are slower (at least in raw MHz) than the previous Pentium 4 chips. Pentium 4 topped out at 3.8 GHz. The Core processors, which are replacing Pentium 4s, currently top out below 2.5 GHz. (The new chips have a higher performance per MHz than the Pentium 4, but I don't think it's high enough to be equivalent to 3.8 GHz in most use cases.) Instead of raw computing power, Intel is now concentrating on performance per watt.
We thought the same thing about CPUs until recently. We all thought that CPU speed would continue to be the main goal of Intel and AMD. But look at what Intel is working towards now -- CPU power per watt. And the new Core CPUs are nowhere near the MHz speed of the Pentium 4.
I suspect we'll be doing the same thing with software in the next few years. Instead of features and speed, developers will concentrate on security. In many ways, they already are. (And they're often more concerned with development speed than execution speed already.) System administrators have been concentrating on security for quite some time now. I think the current best solution for compartmentalization is virtual machines. (The VMware type, moreso than the Java type.) I think that adds complexity though, causing the sysadmins to have to manage many more systems. So I expect things to move into the kernel more. The OpenVZ method seems to be more manageable.
I wouldn't say they're losing their relevance, as much as their focus. Microsoft is a technology company, who is really good at marketing its own products. This just seems so far out of its core competency, it seems like an attempt to do something just because their competitor is. When a company starts doing that, they lose focus on what they're good at. **cough** Novell **cough**.
Not to mention, there are a LOT of companies that are afraid of competition from Microsoft. Why would they want to go through Microsoft for advertising? Heck, even Google is starting to run into that problem.
The truth is that the vast majority of people who buy health insurance get exactly what they're buying: basic health care at tolerable prices, and the ability to undergo more substantial, rarer treatment (cancer, major car accident, etc) without automatically going bankrupt. Arguably insurance should only be about those more catastrophic situations, but the trend is to also use it more or less like a savings account... take a little out every week, and then only "pay" $10 when you visit the doctor for a checkup, etc. But that is "what they do." That's what they do for almost everyone that uses them. That is their purpose, and the people running those businesses make a living and pay back their investors while doing so. That's how it is on paper, and that's how it is in practice.
Now wait a minute. Given that the insurance company has to profit, on average, I'm going to get $90 worth of health care for $100. Like you say, that's great for catastrophic cases. But for "managed health care", it's pretty clear that I'm not gaining much. I think the problem is that we're lumping the 2 together.
While it might seem cheaper to pay $10 per visit, when you're paying $100 per visit on average in premiums, it would really be cheaper to just pay $80 per visit. Also, remember that by law, a for-profit corporation's stated purpose is to make a profit.
Another way to look at it is from a moral/ethical perspective. Is it really ethical to have medical decisions made for people by a company whose goal is to make money? A company who would make more money by denying care? Really, that's not a decision that we should be allowing companies to make. Even if it weren't a medical issue, that would generally be percieved as a conflict of interest. In the medical case, it seems absurd.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony actually has a lot of technological achievements in its history. And they have led the industy in a few things -- like the Walkman and the Compact Disc.
Sony produced the first commercially successful transistor radio. They invented the Walkman category. The Trinitron CRT tube was generally regarded as the best picture tube for decades. They seriously advanced the state of the art graphics with the PlayStation and PS2. And ATRAC and MP3 were apparently developed at the same time. So there's been quite a bit of innovation from Sony.
Sony has also been good at technology implementation. Their Betamax standard was actually a better technology than VHS. That line of technology was actually used by TV studios for years, in higher-end components. But you are right about one thing -- they still haven't really learned their lesson about proprietary formats from Betamax.
The MiniDisc format was not completely proprietary. It was developed by Sony, but licensed to nearly all of the major audio equipment companies. Over 20 manufacturers made MD players and records.
Yeah, I think you're spot on. I have a hard time understanding how the original poster expects the developers to fix something that they've already fixed.
Personally, I find it GREAT that most of the time I find a bug, it's already been found and fixed. So I might have to wait a while before the next release. But if I need the fix badly enough, I can just grab the CVS version. Or grab the patch. Really, I find that there's a lot of flexibility -- instead of waiting and hoping that the vendor fixes my problem, and begging them for a patch, or buying the upgrade.
If we don't vote, how can we make sure that the other lizard doesn't get elected?
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos!
Hmm. I had first considered the Lao Tzu quote to be somewhat accurate. But your point actually fits in quite nicely with what Jared Diamond (among others) has to say about the rise of civilization and the political classes. His basic premise is that when people got skilled enough to produce food with lots of time left over, they could develop things such as written language, politicians, and militaries. And the fact that Western culture was able to produce food more effectively lead to them having a big head-start with their military, leaving us with the current Western-controlled planet.
Like many things, there are actually existing laws to do this -- they're just never enforced. To apply for a patent, you have to sign a statement under penalty of perjury that you are the true inventor and have disclosed all information you know that would be relevant to the examination of the application. Bruce Perens has suggested we start enforcing this more. But there are quite a few difficulties with this.
One of the most difficult issues is proving that the submitor knew that what he submitted was obvious to anyone. If we could lower the requirements to say that if it's obvious to someone skilled in the art, then there would be a presumption of guilt. That would help, but has some constitutional issues. Your idea of an administrative fee might help, but I don't think it would help much, since you'd have to have really large fees to effect large companies.
Huh? If the patent were declared invalid, Amazon could still use the one-click method described in the patent.
When I find something I'm looking for, I keep looking -- sometimes in case I might come across a better result, and sometimes just disprove that silly saying.
a brief search turned up a Lenovo 3000 N100 0689 which costs $994 less
Whoa! Where can I find this $105 notebook?
You might not be a security expert, but you've LISTENED to security experts, and you are following better security practices than 95% of the home users out there. (Probably better than 80% of the companies out there. Heck, probably better than 50% of the security professionals out there.) By using Firefox and a NAT router, you've reduced your attack surface by probably 90%. Keeping your software up to date, and running scans adds probably another 9%.
You're definitely an educated user, doing the right thing. And perhaps you provide good evidence that the majority of posters here are right -- it's not the security professionals who are at fault. But why is it that we can't convince more people to be as conscientious as you? Why can't we make it even easier?
Looking at my first paragraph, I think I have to place the blame squarely on Microsoft. I'm not typically a Microsoft basher. I think they do a lot of things well, but like anything, there are a lot of problems as well. (And I generally prefer Linux, although I do prefer Microsoft Office apps.) But it's Windows and IE's "insecure by design" that's really at fault. Why should a Windows client have any ports open by default? Or at least without asking if I want to open them during the installation wizards.
I went to a presentation last night on web application vulnerability/penetration testing. They said that they are able to gain full access to about 40% of the web apps they test. And by full access, they mean access to system accounts and arbitrary database read/write. Incredible. Mostly due to programmers not validating input.
So while I agree that security professionals are doing a lot, and largely being ignored, I think that we need to make it clear why and how things need to change. Largely, I think this will mainly require treating security as a process involving people, not as technological products.
I thought you were making that word up! You weren't.
I've often said that Debian is the Linux of Linux distros. In other words, it's built very much in the same way that Linux is. No one entity owns it, it has a very distributed and open development process, and it's "more free" than most of the other popular alternatives. So I think in the end, Debian will be at least the basis for the majority of GNU/Linux deployments.
That said, I'm not sure what the Microsoft of Linux even means.
If he means having control of Linux, then I think he's right. A single company having significant control of GNU/Linux would be a bad thing, because it would imply less control for users and customers. And I think control is the real reason why so many people and companies have moved to Linux and Open Source.
If the Microsoft of Linux means having a large market share of commercial Linux deployments, then I think that could be OK. Although I wouldn't expect it to ever get to 90%. For one, I expect the no-cost GNU/Linux distros to remain popular. (Or at least one of them.)
If it means THE company that people turn to when they need Linux expertise, Red Hat was close to being that a few years ago. I saw that as a positive; I'm sorry to see that they've lost a lot of that prestige, relative to other Linux companies.
Anyway, I don't think there will ever be another Microsoft. Just like there will never be another Beatles, despite what had been predicted about the New Kids on the Block, or any other band. The ingredients for their creation within society as a whole just don't exist anymore.
This just in -- $300 product is better than free competitor!
Um, yeah. Of course it is. It's been around a lot longer, and it's had a ton more money put into it. Why would you expect anything different? But it's relatively very expensive, and nobody but Microsoft has much control over it.
There aren't a lot of people jumping from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice because OpenOffice is a lot better. They're moving because it's a lot cheaper, and it lets them control their own destiny.
The OpenDocument format is very much about allowing users to control their destiny, by allowing anyone to easily access the content of their files without being beholden to any one company. (And that will likely lead to positive results in the competitive market, driving down prices.)
I'm greatly in favor of OpenDocument. But I actually like Word and Excel, and whenever I have an employer paying for my copy, I'm happy to use it. I'm very interested in the ODF plugin for Microsoft Office. I'd much rather have a standards-compliant format that's easy for me to manipulate with a wide variety of tools. That's what ODF is about.
As far as disabled people's access, they are right to complain about OpenOffice and the other ODF apps. But like anyone else complaining about Open Source software, they need to contribute to help fix the situation. In the meantime, I don't see any harm in them continuing to use Microsoft Office. It's still a better situation than using MS Office without ODF. And eventually, the Open Source programs will improve their accessibility.
Wow, I'm impressed. A lower Slashdot ID than me, and a 3-letter MIT alumni email address -- with just your first name.
Oh, and an answer just about as concise as possible. And hopefully correct.
Minix has always been a microkernel, as far as I know. It was back in 1992 that Tannenbaum argued with Linus that a monolithic kernel was the wrong way to go. Had Minix had a more flexible license and maintainer, there's a decent chance that it would have gone on to do what Linux did.
Good points on the I/O versus system calls and caching. Your work load does not sound typical to me though.
I would guess that in an ideal world, we'd want to choose monolithic versus micro-kernels for various different tasks. For your case, it sounds like performance is more important than security. So a monolithic kernel would probably be best. But I think most tasks would be better off with more security, at the expense of some performance.
I'd also point out that there are some microkernels out there that don't seem to have any performance penalty. QNX is probably the best example. I'm not sure about L4, but it probably has better performance characteristics than Mach, and Linux runs on top of it. Someone also mentioned that BeOS had a microkernel, and performed very well.
I think we could argue this point for days.
Most people buying PCs these days DO NOT care about speed. Heck, they don't even know what a MHz is. They get a slightly faster CPU because that's what the salesman tells them they need, or is a better value. (I typically recommend around 2nd from the bottom, in the theory that it will last longer than the cheapest choice.) I mean, a lot of people are just running Word and Excel. They were perfectly happy with their 800 MHz Pentium III, and the code didn't get 3 times slower. Hard drive and network performance are the more likely limiting factors in today's use cases.
Even for servers, I/O is usually more important for performance. Your point about CPU caches shows that memory latency is typically a bigger bottleneck than raw CPU speed. If the CPU were the bottleneck, how would adding cache help? How often is your CPU running at 100%? How long does it run at 100%?
Apologies for not making a joke on the name, like every other post so far...
I'm confused about these new CPUs. I know the Core is based off the Pentium M, and the Core 2 uses a new micro-architecture, also based primarily off the Pentium M, as well as the Pentium III. My question is -- is the Core 2 a direct-line descendent from the Core? Or is the Core 2 the first to use the new micro-architecture, with the Core the last direct-line descendent of the Pentium M?
If you were right, nobody would buy anything except the top-speed CPUs. If you look at what people are buying, they tend to be more middle-of-the-road or low-end CPUs. So I think your argument falls down.
I'd also note that Intel's latest Core CPUs are slower (at least in raw MHz) than the previous Pentium 4 chips. Pentium 4 topped out at 3.8 GHz. The Core processors, which are replacing Pentium 4s, currently top out below 2.5 GHz. (The new chips have a higher performance per MHz than the Pentium 4, but I don't think it's high enough to be equivalent to 3.8 GHz in most use cases.) Instead of raw computing power, Intel is now concentrating on performance per watt.
We thought the same thing about CPUs until recently. We all thought that CPU speed would continue to be the main goal of Intel and AMD. But look at what Intel is working towards now -- CPU power per watt. And the new Core CPUs are nowhere near the MHz speed of the Pentium 4.
I suspect we'll be doing the same thing with software in the next few years. Instead of features and speed, developers will concentrate on security. In many ways, they already are. (And they're often more concerned with development speed than execution speed already.) System administrators have been concentrating on security for quite some time now. I think the current best solution for compartmentalization is virtual machines. (The VMware type, moreso than the Java type.) I think that adds complexity though, causing the sysadmins to have to manage many more systems. So I expect things to move into the kernel more. The OpenVZ method seems to be more manageable.
He didn't say he spent only 1 hour per page -- he said he spent 1 hour per page just correcting existing material for clarity. In just 1 revision.
I wouldn't say they're losing their relevance, as much as their focus. Microsoft is a technology company, who is really good at marketing its own products. This just seems so far out of its core competency, it seems like an attempt to do something just because their competitor is. When a company starts doing that, they lose focus on what they're good at. **cough** Novell **cough**.
Not to mention, there are a LOT of companies that are afraid of competition from Microsoft. Why would they want to go through Microsoft for advertising? Heck, even Google is starting to run into that problem.
Is it truly the original? Did Han shoot first?
Because a rejection would be subject to appeals and such. If you approve it, the case is closed.
Considering the fact that rejecting a procedure would take more paperwork than approving it, I fail to see any ethical problem. ;)
Now wait a minute. Given that the insurance company has to profit, on average, I'm going to get $90 worth of health care for $100. Like you say, that's great for catastrophic cases. But for "managed health care", it's pretty clear that I'm not gaining much. I think the problem is that we're lumping the 2 together.
While it might seem cheaper to pay $10 per visit, when you're paying $100 per visit on average in premiums, it would really be cheaper to just pay $80 per visit. Also, remember that by law, a for-profit corporation's stated purpose is to make a profit.
Another way to look at it is from a moral/ethical perspective. Is it really ethical to have medical decisions made for people by a company whose goal is to make money? A company who would make more money by denying care? Really, that's not a decision that we should be allowing companies to make. Even if it weren't a medical issue, that would generally be percieved as a conflict of interest. In the medical case, it seems absurd.