They're going to work fine on his computer, and he runs Kazaa so they are made available over Kazaa too. Problem is, others won't be able to play them after they download them from him. However, I wonder if Joe cares. The only thing Joe will be upset about is not being able to play music he downloads from others who are simply copying DRM files from similarly packaged music. But I somehow doubt Joe will make the connection between the files copied off the CD in this manner and the problem he's getting when he downloads random track X from Y.
This could actually have a very pleasant side effect working in favor of the free world, if those files contain DRM (which they most certainly do)...
The collective thought process of the file sharing world will become: ".WMA files are broken,.MP3 files will play."
I don't know about you, but I'd be happy to see DRM and WMA become hated among non-technical users. It would be great to see the user community truly revolt against closed technology for the same reason us open source geeks do.
I, for one, think this is a smart move on Sun's part -- and hopefully a key move as part of a strategy to make Sun successful in the Unix market of the 21st century (you know, the one where people want and use Linux on commodity processors).
Opteron is a great choice. Not only is it technologically superior to Itanic, but it allows Sun and AMD to work together to keep Intel at bay. What's good for Intel usually ends up being good for Dell and Microsoft -- not Sun. Plus, Sun gets to save face by not having to turn around and say "uhhh... ok, maybe Intel isn't so bad after all."
All Sun has to do now is execute this properly, sell the products at a reasonable price, and stand behind a solid dual Linux/Unix strategy the way IBM and HP are doing. The toughest part will, of course, be keeping McNealy's big mouth closed.
I'm as annoyed by annoying Flash stuff as the next guy, but think for a minute what this means to the non-geek world -- yeah, you know, the people who we keep saying we want to see using Linux on the desktop.
There's lots of Flash, and Linux runs it flawlessly. What happens if Sparkle starts to displace Flash as the weapon-of-choice for webmasters who think they can't get it all done with ordinary HTML? There are sites out there that require Flash. Yes, it's annoying, and yes, we'd prefer to see it done right. But will that ever-popular dude, Joe Sixpack, care? All he'll know is that his favorite website requires Sparkle, and there's no Sparkle for Linux or Mac, so he'll stick with Windows.
Flash may be used in annoying ways but its availability on Linux is one of Linux's strengths as a desktop operating system.
I can turn red traffic lights green just by staring at them. The time required varies a bit from light to light, but eventually they all bend to my whim and turn from red to green.
In particular, Microsoft would like to locate and permanently detain the individual responsible for the treacherous malware program called "Linux." This highly dangerous program causes Windows to not be present at all on any infected computer! Since, as Steve Ballmer keeps telling us, every time you fail to buy a Microsoft program, God kills a kitten... Microsoft is offering a large bounty to find the author of this "Linux" program.
God Bless Mom, Apple Pie, and John Ashcroft! Preseve the American way of life! Find and destroy the evil virus writers!
He was fired for a fairly innocous describing of part of the physical layout of their campus. While I'm not exactly fond of beast of Redmond, they do have some pretty valid security concerns.
Actually, Microsoft is probably safer now that the world knows this. After all, we now know that if you ship Microsoft a bomb set to explode in the loading dock, you'll take out a printing shop, but you will almost certainly not destroy Gates or Ballmer. Armed with that knowledge, would you even bother spending the money on that bomb?
The mighty and powerful X10 Corporation is now exacting its revenge upon its enemies! No popunders, you say? Fine! They have now upgraded from X10 to X17, and instead of simply displaying popunder windows they will now bombard the Earth with fireballs!
It will be a shame to see this company go. Seriously. So they used pop-up and pop-under advertising -- so what? Lots of companies do. At the end of the day, they still sold home automation gear at great prices. I hooked up my entire home using their products, didn't spend a lot, and it's wonderful to use. With the X10 company gone, I will have to turn to Lutron, Smarthome, or other more expensive makers of X10 gear.
Or we could all just upgrade from X10 to X11. I hear the upgrade lets you run graphical applications remotely.:)
I'm starting to think that perhaps the European politicians in question simply didn't realize how controversial the issue of software patents really is. And maybe that's why they keep leaving unfinished business on the table -- it provides the big, deep-pocketed corporate players in the game with opportunities to give the politicians even bigger bribes in order to get their way.
(For those of you in the United States who do not understand this strange word "bribe", it simply refers to the illegal exchange of money in order to reach some selfish political end; here in the US it's referred to as a "campaign contribution.")
Could it be that "Netscape" will be the next "Amiga" brand? In other words, a once-great brand that they just slap on things they want to draw attention to, even though the new offerings have absolutely nothing to do with the original?
AOL are fools to have let go of the Mozilla people. Netscape 7.x would have been the perfect fully-integrated client software for this new service. And it would have been cross-platform from the very beginning, allowing AOL to tap into markets that were otherwise inaccessible.
I'm a bit concerned about this, for a different reason.
Microsoft evidently has some sort of alternative way to write pages that make calls to plug-ins now; this was featured a day or two ago in another story on this subject.
Is there a possibility that they might leverage this new markup syntax to encourage web page authors to write pages that make it difficult/impossible for other browsers to load the plugins?
And if you accidentally vote for a candidate who does not exist, or if you spell his/her name incorrectly, Verisign will assume you want their candidate in office.
I'm sure that by 2008, the CEO of Verisign will take a four-year sabbatical to hold office as the President of the United States. This administration will, among other things, abolish ICANN, IETF, IANA, etc. and simply hand all Internet authority over to Verisign.
Does this mean that DirecTV is now going to come after all London commuters? After all, according to DirecTV, the only reason anyone would ever want to own a smart card, is to pick up satellite TV service without paying DirecTV.
Ok all you Sun-bashers out there... what happens to OpenOffice if you get your way and Sun folds up shop?
Linux has no chance on the desktop without a top-quality office suite, and Sun Microsystems has a bunch of paid developers making sure we continue to have one.
So before you wish for the death of Sun, think about this:
Linux kills off Sun
Without continued development of OpenOffice, Linux never reaches the mainstream desktop
Microsoft eventually figures out a way to lock the Windows desktop to Windows servers (DRM?)
Linux becomes useless on servers and is replaced by Windows
The fact that Sun ripped off large chuncks of work from the Open Sopurce community is not a plus, and will do *nothing* positive to the community. [...] I have worked with Sun in the Open source community long enought to know that Sun only cares about one thing when it comes to Open Source, and that's free labour.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am sick and tired of hearing all this Sun-bashing from a bunch of half-witted Slashbots.
Sun has contributed more to the open source community than IBM.
We could of course start with classics like NFS and NIS, which appear pretty much everywhere specifically because Sun open sourced them.
You think GNOME made such a vast improvement between 1.x and 2.x because a bunch of kids wrote code in their spare time? Sun has a lot of people working feverishly on GNOME. That's why it's so damn polished these days. Sun also contributed nearly all of the new accessibility features, which is a requirement to get in the door for some of those government contracts we want so desperately to see Linux win right now.
Ever heard of OpenOffice? Do you think Linux has even a ghost of a chance on the mainstream desktop without it? (If you answered yes, please take your KOffice CD and your delusions elsewhere.) We have Sun, and only Sun, to thank for freeing this absolutely crucial piece of software.
Sun's biggest liability is Scott McNealy's big mouth. Everyone knows that, and hopefully Sun will wise up someday and either replace him or find a way to get him to quiet down. But to paint Sun as a big advocate of closed software and lock-in, similar to Microsoft or SCO, is beyond stupid. It's just plain hypocritical. Sun's attitude towards Linux is a bit schizophrenic, but they are not the enemy. They may not have gotten up the guts to slap a GPL on the Java runtime, but that doesn't mean they're not a big contributor to the open source pool in other places.
Why do our corporations receive the benefit of taxable import on goods, when we the people do not receive the same protection.
I can answer that question in one word.
One character, even.
W.
Remove the corporate whore from power and perhaps we will begin to see our ridiculously unbalanced corporate/government integration start to shift back towards the center.
In fact, if your parents don't call you already, even with their Windows questions, you must suck. Or be a bad child.
Or perhaps just someone with enough guts to put a foot down.
I finally got so sick and tired of doing tech support for family and friends that a couple of years ago I simply declared to them all, no more computer help for Microsoft products. I don't get paid for tech support, and Bill has too much money, so go bug him instead.
There was one person with a clue. My mother-in-law switched to Linux. I installed it for her and she finds it a pleasure to use compared to the constantly broken dozebox she sits in front of at work. It never has any significant problems, and when she does have the occasional question or concern it's a reasonable one that I can help her with.
Would she be able to compile a kernel? Shut up idiot, that's a stupid question. She doesn't have to. She turns it on and It Just Works (tm). And when the latest dozeworm comes wriggling across the wires, I don't have to drive 100 miles to her house to patch things up, because, like my own computers, hers is immune.
So yes, it's doable, and no, it doesn't mean you're a terrible friend or relative. Friends don't let friends use broken Microsoft products. And for that matter, true friends and family members don't try to press each other into involuntary servitude doing tech support.
I'm going to go out on a limb and be the nay-sayer here.
Since it's a distribution nobody wants, they have to resort to displaying advertisements in order to generate revenue. So that must mean there aren't a lot of people installing Mandrake, and therefore a very small number of eyeballs affixed to those advertisements. So why would anyone want to spend $7000 on one?
This is not a troll, but I'm sure some random Mandrake fan with mod points is going to treat it as one. Mandrake simply doesn't have any significant way to differentiate their distribution anymore, and unlike RH & SusE they don't have a support business to generate the real bucks. The realities of the marketplace are dictating that this company doesn't have what it takes to continue to exist. Perhaps the advertising scheme is a little bit more noble than their previous "give us money as if we were a charity" game, but both seem like desparation moves when you look at them from a business perspective.
This is not a troll, so give me a chance here before pressing those mod buttons.
Lately, Sun has has two really big problems holding it back. Those problems are named Scott McNealy and Bill Joy. Stuck in unixland. They were the only "minicomputer" company that didn't jump to Windows NT back in the early 1990's, and they won big time on that bet. Unisys, Data General, etc. where are they now?
Sun stuck with Unix and it turned out to be a good play for them. Now the big man on campus is Linux, and the Sun top brass think they can make the same play again. But this time it's different:
Moving from Unix to Linux is easy
Customers don't have oodles of cash anymore
Linux, unlike Windows, does not suck.
It's time for Sun to stop being schizophrenic, and embrace Linux as much as SGI, HP, and IBM have. Linux is the name of the game, and I really believe that it's been McNealy and Joy holding them back. Joy is now gone. If McNealy bails out too, then Sun can find its place in the Linux world. As a true open source pioneer (NFS anyone?) they know how to make the engineering happen. Let's hope they manage to pull it off.
I would also hate to see OpenOffice orphaned. We need this package.
I think this is a lousy idea regardless of whether it's the good guys or the Evil Empire implementing it... but, just like with Mono, I think it's good to have it around. Here's why:
In a couple of years, there are going to be Windows applications that want to make use of WinFS. They're all going to hook into some wacky new API that talks to an arbitrary new type of data store.
What happens when the good Linux folks (say, the WINE developers) want to implement that API? They've got to put the data somewhere. Perhaps they'll decide "ok, we'll write WINFSAPI.DLL as a shim between the Windows API and Gnome-Storage." It would sure beat doing a bunch of ugly hacks to the local filesystem.
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They're going to work fine on his computer, and he runs Kazaa so they are made available over Kazaa too. Problem is, others won't be able to play them after they download them from him. However, I wonder if Joe cares. The only thing Joe will be upset about is not being able to play music he downloads from others who are simply copying DRM files from similarly packaged music. But I somehow doubt Joe will make the connection between the files copied off the CD in this manner and the problem he's getting when he downloads random track X from Y.
.MP3 files will play."
This could actually have a very pleasant side effect working in favor of the free world, if those files contain DRM (which they most certainly do)...
The collective thought process of the file sharing world will become: ".WMA files are broken,
I don't know about you, but I'd be happy to see DRM and WMA become hated among non-technical users. It would be great to see the user community truly revolt against closed technology for the same reason us open source geeks do.
I, for one, think this is a smart move on Sun's part -- and hopefully a key move as part of a strategy to make Sun successful in the Unix market of the 21st century (you know, the one where people want and use Linux on commodity processors).
Opteron is a great choice. Not only is it technologically superior to Itanic, but it allows Sun and AMD to work together to keep Intel at bay. What's good for Intel usually ends up being good for Dell and Microsoft -- not Sun. Plus, Sun gets to save face by not having to turn around and say "uhhh... ok, maybe Intel isn't so bad after all."
All Sun has to do now is execute this properly, sell the products at a reasonable price, and stand behind a solid dual Linux/Unix strategy the way IBM and HP are doing. The toughest part will, of course, be keeping McNealy's big mouth closed.
I'm as annoyed by annoying Flash stuff as the next guy, but think for a minute what this means to the non-geek world -- yeah, you know, the people who we keep saying we want to see using Linux on the desktop.
There's lots of Flash, and Linux runs it flawlessly. What happens if Sparkle starts to displace Flash as the weapon-of-choice for webmasters who think they can't get it all done with ordinary HTML? There are sites out there that require Flash. Yes, it's annoying, and yes, we'd prefer to see it done right. But will that ever-popular dude, Joe Sixpack, care? All he'll know is that his favorite website requires Sparkle, and there's no Sparkle for Linux or Mac, so he'll stick with Windows.
Flash may be used in annoying ways but its availability on Linux is one of Linux's strengths as a desktop operating system.
Easier solution -- with no technology.
I can turn red traffic lights green just by staring at them. The time required varies a bit from light to light, but eventually they all bend to my whim and turn from red to green.
In particular, Microsoft would like to locate and permanently detain the individual responsible for the treacherous malware program called "Linux." This highly dangerous program causes Windows to not be present at all on any infected computer! Since, as Steve Ballmer keeps telling us, every time you fail to buy a Microsoft program, God kills a kitten ... Microsoft is offering a large bounty to find the author of this "Linux" program.
God Bless Mom, Apple Pie, and John Ashcroft! Preseve the American way of life! Find and destroy the evil virus writers!
He was fired for a fairly innocous describing of part of the physical layout of their campus. While I'm not exactly fond of beast of Redmond, they do have some pretty valid security concerns.
Actually, Microsoft is probably safer now that the world knows this. After all, we now know that if you ship Microsoft a bomb set to explode in the loading dock, you'll take out a printing shop, but you will almost certainly not destroy Gates or Ballmer. Armed with that knowledge, would you even bother spending the money on that bomb?
The mighty and powerful X10 Corporation is now exacting its revenge upon its enemies! No popunders, you say? Fine! They have now upgraded from X10 to X17, and instead of simply displaying popunder windows they will now bombard the Earth with fireballs!
(...and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.)
It will be a shame to see this company go. Seriously. So they used pop-up and pop-under advertising -- so what? Lots of companies do. At the end of the day, they still sold home automation gear at great prices. I hooked up my entire home using their products, didn't spend a lot, and it's wonderful to use. With the X10 company gone, I will have to turn to Lutron, Smarthome, or other more expensive makers of X10 gear.
:)
Or we could all just upgrade from X10 to X11. I hear the upgrade lets you run graphical applications remotely.
.NET remoting? Isn't that, like, patented or something?
Isn't it obvious? Funding is now underway for Bush/Cheynney 2004, and they want to make sure Microsoft sends them another big check this year.
This is more like Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs declaring Microsoft dead. Why is this newsworthy?
Hey, why shouldn't Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs declare Microsoft dead? Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison do it all the time!
CSO?
Aren't they the people who are trying to stamp out Lniux with a bunch of frivolous lwasuits?
Dyslexic lawyers of the world, untie!
I'm starting to think that perhaps the European politicians in question simply didn't realize how controversial the issue of software patents really is. And maybe that's why they keep leaving unfinished business on the table -- it provides the big, deep-pocketed corporate players in the game with opportunities to give the politicians even bigger bribes in order to get their way.
(For those of you in the United States who do not understand this strange word "bribe", it simply refers to the illegal exchange of money in order to reach some selfish political end; here in the US it's referred to as a "campaign contribution.")
Could it be that "Netscape" will be the next "Amiga" brand? In other words, a once-great brand that they just slap on things they want to draw attention to, even though the new offerings have absolutely nothing to do with the original?
AOL are fools to have let go of the Mozilla people. Netscape 7.x would have been the perfect fully-integrated client software for this new service. And it would have been cross-platform from the very beginning, allowing AOL to tap into markets that were otherwise inaccessible.
I'm a bit concerned about this, for a different reason.
Microsoft evidently has some sort of alternative way to write pages that make calls to plug-ins now; this was featured a day or two ago in another story on this subject.
Is there a possibility that they might leverage this new markup syntax to encourage web page authors to write pages that make it difficult/impossible for other browsers to load the plugins?
"Can you hear me now? Good! You now owe $799 to SCO!"
And if you accidentally vote for a candidate who does not exist, or if you spell his/her name incorrectly, Verisign will assume you want their candidate in office.
I'm sure that by 2008, the CEO of Verisign will take a four-year sabbatical to hold office as the President of the United States. This administration will, among other things, abolish ICANN, IETF, IANA, etc. and simply hand all Internet authority over to Verisign.
Does this mean that DirecTV is now going to come after all London commuters? After all, according to DirecTV, the only reason anyone would ever want to own a smart card, is to pick up satellite TV service without paying DirecTV.
Linux has no chance on the desktop without a top-quality office suite, and Sun Microsystems has a bunch of paid developers making sure we continue to have one.
So before you wish for the death of Sun, think about this:
- Linux kills off Sun
- Without continued development of OpenOffice, Linux never reaches the mainstream desktop
- Microsoft eventually figures out a way to lock the Windows desktop to Windows servers (DRM?)
- Linux becomes useless on servers and is replaced by Windows
- Microsoft uber alles
Now, do you really think Sun is the enemy?I don't know about the rest of you, but I am sick and tired of hearing all this Sun-bashing from a bunch of half-witted Slashbots.
Sun has contributed more to the open source community than IBM.
- We could of course start with classics like NFS and NIS, which appear pretty much everywhere specifically because Sun open sourced them.
- You think GNOME made such a vast improvement between 1.x and 2.x because a bunch of kids wrote code in their spare time? Sun has a lot of people working feverishly on GNOME. That's why it's so damn polished these days. Sun also contributed nearly all of the new accessibility features, which is a requirement to get in the door for some of those government contracts we want so desperately to see Linux win right now.
- Ever heard of OpenOffice? Do you think Linux has even a ghost of a chance on the mainstream desktop without it? (If you answered yes, please take your KOffice CD and your delusions elsewhere.) We have Sun, and only Sun, to thank for freeing this absolutely crucial piece of software.
Sun's biggest liability is Scott McNealy's big mouth. Everyone knows that, and hopefully Sun will wise up someday and either replace him or find a way to get him to quiet down. But to paint Sun as a big advocate of closed software and lock-in, similar to Microsoft or SCO, is beyond stupid. It's just plain hypocritical. Sun's attitude towards Linux is a bit schizophrenic, but they are not the enemy. They may not have gotten up the guts to slap a GPL on the Java runtime, but that doesn't mean they're not a big contributor to the open source pool in other places.Why do our corporations receive the benefit of taxable import on goods, when we the people do not receive the same protection.
I can answer that question in one word.
One character, even.
W.
Remove the corporate whore from power and perhaps we will begin to see our ridiculously unbalanced corporate/government integration start to shift back towards the center.
In fact, if your parents don't call you already, even with their Windows questions, you must suck. Or be a bad child.
Or perhaps just someone with enough guts to put a foot down.
I finally got so sick and tired of doing tech support for family and friends that a couple of years ago I simply declared to them all, no more computer help for Microsoft products. I don't get paid for tech support, and Bill has too much money, so go bug him instead.
There was one person with a clue. My mother-in-law switched to Linux. I installed it for her and she finds it a pleasure to use compared to the constantly broken dozebox she sits in front of at work. It never has any significant problems, and when she does have the occasional question or concern it's a reasonable one that I can help her with.
Would she be able to compile a kernel? Shut up idiot, that's a stupid question. She doesn't have to. She turns it on and It Just Works (tm). And when the latest dozeworm comes wriggling across the wires, I don't have to drive 100 miles to her house to patch things up, because, like my own computers, hers is immune.
So yes, it's doable, and no, it doesn't mean you're a terrible friend or relative. Friends don't let friends use broken Microsoft products. And for that matter, true friends and family members don't try to press each other into involuntary servitude doing tech support.
I'm going to go out on a limb and be the nay-sayer here.
Since it's a distribution nobody wants, they have to resort to displaying advertisements in order to generate revenue. So that must mean there aren't a lot of people installing Mandrake, and therefore a very small number of eyeballs affixed to those advertisements. So why would anyone want to spend $7000 on one?
This is not a troll, but I'm sure some random Mandrake fan with mod points is going to treat it as one. Mandrake simply doesn't have any significant way to differentiate their distribution anymore, and unlike RH & SusE they don't have a support business to generate the real bucks. The realities of the marketplace are dictating that this company doesn't have what it takes to continue to exist. Perhaps the advertising scheme is a little bit more noble than their previous "give us money as if we were a charity" game, but both seem like desparation moves when you look at them from a business perspective.
Lately, Sun has has two really big problems holding it back. Those problems are named Scott McNealy and Bill Joy. Stuck in unixland. They were the only "minicomputer" company that didn't jump to Windows NT back in the early 1990's, and they won big time on that bet. Unisys, Data General, etc. where are they now?
Sun stuck with Unix and it turned out to be a good play for them. Now the big man on campus is Linux, and the Sun top brass think they can make the same play again. But this time it's different:
I would also hate to see OpenOffice orphaned. We need this package.
I think this is a lousy idea regardless of whether it's the good guys or the Evil Empire implementing it... but, just like with Mono, I think it's good to have it around. Here's why:
In a couple of years, there are going to be Windows applications that want to make use of WinFS. They're all going to hook into some wacky new API that talks to an arbitrary new type of data store.
What happens when the good Linux folks (say, the WINE developers) want to implement that API? They've got to put the data somewhere. Perhaps they'll decide "ok, we'll write WINFSAPI.DLL as a shim between the Windows API and Gnome-Storage." It would sure beat doing a bunch of ugly hacks to the local filesystem.