I could see these arrangements changing in the not too distant future. Cuba is old news, and it's widely believed that as soon as Castro is gone, Cuba is going to be flung wide open to American tourism, trade, etc. Meanwhile, our buddy Hugo Chavez is working really really hard to get the United States to hate Venezuela as much as possible (he'd be the real monkey boy if Ballmer didn't do that trick so much better).
So what could happen in a few years is that the Internet embargo for Cuba will be lifted, but a new one will be placed on Venezuela... and that big undersea cable will find its primary use in the other direction.
The problem with these recommendations is that they are formulated from the perspective of "What would make Windows a better operating system?" It's being thought of in terms of, what improvements are in the best interest of Windows users?
That's not how it works. Vista is a shining example of the fact that new features in Windows are designed to be in the best interest of Microsoft. Sometimes the interests of Microsoft and its users overlap (for example, an OS that doesn't crash quite as much will provide a better user experience, but it also saves Microsoft tech support dollars) but more often their interests are conflicting (end users were not asking for more DRM).
The bottom line is that operating systems are not killer apps. The job of an operating system is to provide a platform for the launching of applications. Do that and then get out of the way.
If you don't need the converter boxes, for which government subsidies are limited, why get one? You're taking it away from someone who could use it.
"Someone who could use it" is probably already receiving large sums of cash and other benefits that were stolen from me by the government in the form of tax-funded social welfare programs. I have no remorse over taking back such a tiny fraction of it.
What I would really like to see from the GNOME team is a pledge to keep the framework free of unencumbered technology. Specifically, this means we need them to promise that both the framework itself, and its core applications, will not be built with.NET (Mono).
Miguel de Icaza may enjoy appeasing Microsoft, but most of the Free World does not.
I have my own data format that is an alternative to XML as well. It works by normalizing the data into records which all contain the same number of fields, and placing an agreed-upon delimiter between each field. The end of the record is indicated by a newline.
I think this "delimited" format has a lot of potential.
Have you requested your free converter box from Uncle Sam yet? I certainly have! And no, I don't receive over-the-air television... I've got DirecTV and I'm quite happy with it. But with the coupons, I can get a couple of free boxes with power supplies and RF modulators in them... quite nice for various geek projects! One of them will probably be fitted as a simple RF modulator appliance so my son can play video games on his TV which only has an antenna input. The other... who knows? Who cares? It's free! (More accurately, it's already paid for; it doesn't even begin to make up for the thousands of dollars the government steals from me each year.)
Do you HONESTLY want ANOTHER point of failure Ma Bell can point to when you can't sync with the DSLAM? I mean, another company for finger pointing to occur?
Who cares? If my plan were implemented then there would be no such thing as Ma Bell. If it were really really easy to switch to another carrier in the same central office, they'd have to work harder to keep your business.
Really, last-mile networks should be owned and run by the neighbourhoods, or failing that atleast be considered infrastructure, really today a working broadband-connection is basic infrastructure like electric power, water, sewage and roads. (it's not -equally- crucial as those, but it's crucial nevertheless, I doubt a house with -no- telecom-connection of any sort would find many buyers)
The ultimate solution would be to ban last-mile owners from providing any services at all. No voice, no video, no data. They exist to provide copper and/or fiber to subscriber premises, and to operate central offices as colocation facilities. That's all. Nothing else.
Then, anyone who wants to provide services, simply colocates their head end equipment at the central offices in areas where they wish to provide service. At that point it doesn't matter whether they're offering video, voice, data, local or long distance, Internet or private lines, it just doesn't matter because the central office is shared between as many providers as will fit in the building.
We need to separate the last mile land-use monopoly from the services being provided. There should be no such thing as an ILEC.
There's no reason to even contemplate it. The article, as well as most of the comments posted here so far, assume that Microsoft acknowledges that there's something wrong with the existing Windows system and that it would be a good idea to start from scratch.
That's a false assumption. Microsoft thinks that Windows is, in fact, Pretty Darned Good (tm) and suggesting otherwise will usually get a chair thrown at you.
This is great. Right now you've got all the "protect our brand" people registering their domain names in.com,.net,.org, and often in.info,.tv, etc. just because they don't want someone else to have it.
Now, there will be so many TLD's that the "protect our brand" people couldn't possibly cover them all.
That field of technology is called "Expert Systems" now. And they've changed the focus. Instead of trying to build a computer program that is capable of thinking and conversing like a human, the focus is now to build software that bases its functionality on a large base of human knowledge that has been input into it.
"a company cannot exploit its monopoly to become a monopoly"
No, but it can "protect and extend" its monopoly. That is the phrase which was used in the antitrust case, and it describes Microsoft's business practices perfectly. IBM handed Microsoft its initial monopoly. Microsoft leveraged that monopoly forward through several generations of computing and products.
In other words, China is jumping on the bandwagon of countries that is playing the "Sue Microsoft Lottery" to get some extra cash.
And I say, good for them. Microsoft has a decades-long history of lying, cheating, stealing, and generally screwing over the rest of the world in order to rake megabucks into their war chest. Therefore I have absolutely no sympathy when someone else screws them. If they want to play dirty then let the rest of the world play dirty against them. I hope the whole world has their chance to sue Microsoft for no good reason.
It's time the free software world merged PIM with social networking.
Then you probably want to be looking at Citadel, which is a full-featured email and PIM system that was built from BBS roots. The user interface and data model are centered around the idea of connecting people with each other, rather than the lame-brained attempt to clone Exchange that everyone else is doing.
Um, I think most of the comments so far are missing the big picture. It doesn't matter what languages are used on the client or the server. The big win for AJAX has been that it doesn't require any browser plugins. The language used is irrelevant. When you develop an AJAX application, it runs in the browser without any special client-side extensions. "ARAX" requires Silverlight, which means you have to download the Silverlight plugin, which isn't available on every platform, and if you're delivering to the public Internet you can't count on that plugin being installed, and you're chained to Microsoft's world, etc. etc. etc.
Microsoft doesn't understand (or does understand, but refuses to admit; or simply doesn't like the fact) that the big win for AJAX is that it runs without browser plugins. No thank you. I'll stick with AJAX.
Wow, in the comments posted so far I'm seeing a lot of Microsoft sycophants trying to convince us that OOo is some sort of buggy amateur project. I guess when you threaten a cash cow like MS Office you're going to get a lot of pushback.
Anyway, given the architecture of OOo it really would be easy to get its full functionality running inside a web browser. Remember that in order to be cross-platform, OOo contains a UI layer that abstracts and decouples the operating system's widget set from the core application logic. (It even has a "headless" mode that has no UI at all -- this can be used when all you need is to do some scripted tasks, etc.)
So it would theoretically be pretty easy to have a bunch of application servers running the OOo core and then, instead of displaying the UI using a traditional widget set (like GTK on Linux, for example), it could remote the UI out to a thin layer running on the user's browser. It would be simple using Flash, but I'll bet the Google wizards could even build it using AJAX and get something pretty functional.
Kicking and screaming will the obsolete idea of "desktop software" be dragged away, but it's inevitable that something like this will eventually replace it.
Novell may attribute its earnings "outside of the Microsoft deal" in more ways than one. To many IT buyers, a Microsoft-tainted Linux supplier is the equivalent of napalm. I can certainly attest that we've done absolutely no business with Novell since they signed the deal, and will continue to avoid Novell as a vendor for as long as the Microsoft contract is in effect. Red Hat, on the other hand, has remained "pure" and has received the majority of our Linux business.
Really now, they already have this in China, and people get around it all the time. If this goes through, someone's going to make a fortune selling VPN tunnels that get you out onto the "real" Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
I could see these arrangements changing in the not too distant future. Cuba is old news, and it's widely believed that as soon as Castro is gone, Cuba is going to be flung wide open to American tourism, trade, etc. Meanwhile, our buddy Hugo Chavez is working really really hard to get the United States to hate Venezuela as much as possible (he'd be the real monkey boy if Ballmer didn't do that trick so much better).
... and that big undersea cable will find its primary use in the other direction.
So what could happen in a few years is that the Internet embargo for Cuba will be lifted, but a new one will be placed on Venezuela
The problem with these recommendations is that they are formulated from the perspective of "What would make Windows a better operating system?" It's being thought of in terms of, what improvements are in the best interest of Windows users?
That's not how it works. Vista is a shining example of the fact that new features in Windows are designed to be in the best interest of Microsoft. Sometimes the interests of Microsoft and its users overlap (for example, an OS that doesn't crash quite as much will provide a better user experience, but it also saves Microsoft tech support dollars) but more often their interests are conflicting (end users were not asking for more DRM).
The bottom line is that operating systems are not killer apps. The job of an operating system is to provide a platform for the launching of applications. Do that and then get out of the way.
Superconductor? What? Wait a minute, when did the Man of Steel get a job at the railroad?
"Someone who could use it" is probably already receiving large sums of cash and other benefits that were stolen from me by the government in the form of tax-funded social welfare programs. I have no remorse over taking back such a tiny fraction of it.
What I would really like to see from the GNOME team is a pledge to keep the framework free of unencumbered technology. Specifically, this means we need them to promise that both the framework itself, and its core applications, will not be built with .NET (Mono).
Miguel de Icaza may enjoy appeasing Microsoft, but most of the Free World does not.
I have my own data format that is an alternative to XML as well. It works by normalizing the data into records which all contain the same number of fields, and placing an agreed-upon delimiter between each field. The end of the record is indicated by a newline.
I think this "delimited" format has a lot of potential.
Have you requested your free converter box from Uncle Sam yet? I certainly have! And no, I don't receive over-the-air television ... I've got DirecTV and I'm quite happy with it. But with the coupons, I can get a couple of free boxes with power supplies and RF modulators in them ... quite nice for various geek projects! One of them will probably be fitted as a simple RF modulator appliance so my son can play video games on his TV which only has an antenna input. The other ... who knows? Who cares? It's free! (More accurately, it's already paid for; it doesn't even begin to make up for the thousands of dollars the government steals from me each year.)
Who cares? If my plan were implemented then there would be no such thing as Ma Bell. If it were really really easy to switch to another carrier in the same central office, they'd have to work harder to keep your business.
The ultimate solution would be to ban last-mile owners from providing any services at all. No voice, no video, no data. They exist to provide copper and/or fiber to subscriber premises, and to operate central offices as colocation facilities. That's all. Nothing else.
Then, anyone who wants to provide services, simply colocates their head end equipment at the central offices in areas where they wish to provide service. At that point it doesn't matter whether they're offering video, voice, data, local or long distance, Internet or private lines, it just doesn't matter because the central office is shared between as many providers as will fit in the building.
We need to separate the last mile land-use monopoly from the services being provided. There should be no such thing as an ILEC.
It's called a "cartel."
Ok, maybe not exactly, but it could certainly turn into one, especially if some of the more, shall we say, "evil" industry players begin to join.
There's no reason to even contemplate it. The article, as well as most of the comments posted here so far, assume that Microsoft acknowledges that there's something wrong with the existing Windows system and that it would be a good idea to start from scratch.
That's a false assumption. Microsoft thinks that Windows is, in fact, Pretty Darned Good (tm) and suggesting otherwise will usually get a chair thrown at you.
This is great. Right now you've got all the "protect our brand" people registering their domain names in .com, .net, .org, and often in .info, .tv, etc. just because they don't want someone else to have it.
Now, there will be so many TLD's that the "protect our brand" people couldn't possibly cover them all.
I've been reading Slashdot for a decade and that's the first time I've ever LOL over a comment. Well done.
Dear Mr. Mukasey:
Linux kernel in Windows 7 please.
Thanks.
That field of technology is called "Expert Systems" now. And they've changed the focus. Instead of trying to build a computer program that is capable of thinking and conversing like a human, the focus is now to build software that bases its functionality on a large base of human knowledge that has been input into it.
How much for Linux on that machine? Or better yet, how about a bare drive?
Um, I think most of the comments so far are missing the big picture. It doesn't matter what languages are used on the client or the server. The big win for AJAX has been that it doesn't require any browser plugins. The language used is irrelevant. When you develop an AJAX application, it runs in the browser without any special client-side extensions. "ARAX" requires Silverlight, which means you have to download the Silverlight plugin, which isn't available on every platform, and if you're delivering to the public Internet you can't count on that plugin being installed, and you're chained to Microsoft's world, etc. etc. etc.
Microsoft doesn't understand (or does understand, but refuses to admit; or simply doesn't like the fact) that the big win for AJAX is that it runs without browser plugins. No thank you. I'll stick with AJAX.
Wow, in the comments posted so far I'm seeing a lot of Microsoft sycophants trying to convince us that OOo is some sort of buggy amateur project. I guess when you threaten a cash cow like MS Office you're going to get a lot of pushback.
Anyway, given the architecture of OOo it really would be easy to get its full functionality running inside a web browser. Remember that in order to be cross-platform, OOo contains a UI layer that abstracts and decouples the operating system's widget set from the core application logic. (It even has a "headless" mode that has no UI at all -- this can be used when all you need is to do some scripted tasks, etc.)
So it would theoretically be pretty easy to have a bunch of application servers running the OOo core and then, instead of displaying the UI using a traditional widget set (like GTK on Linux, for example), it could remote the UI out to a thin layer running on the user's browser. It would be simple using Flash, but I'll bet the Google wizards could even build it using AJAX and get something pretty functional.
Kicking and screaming will the obsolete idea of "desktop software" be dragged away, but it's inevitable that something like this will eventually replace it.
<grin>
Novell may attribute its earnings "outside of the Microsoft deal" in more ways than one. To many IT buyers, a Microsoft-tainted Linux supplier is the equivalent of napalm. I can certainly attest that we've done absolutely no business with Novell since they signed the deal, and will continue to avoid Novell as a vendor for as long as the Microsoft contract is in effect. Red Hat, on the other hand, has remained "pure" and has received the majority of our Linux business.
Really now, they already have this in China, and people get around it all the time. If this goes through, someone's going to make a fortune selling VPN tunnels that get you out onto the "real" Internet.