No, I have no evidence one way or the other. In fact, I was merely expounding on a "theory" advanced by another user.
It appears that the copy in question is of a cam of a UK screening. That being the case then why are all of the headlines screaming "leaked"? (This isn't just at slashdot.)
The use of the word "leak" implies that something was let out from the official distribution channels rather than merely the fact that the UK started screening the movie a week ahead of the US.
Again, I support no side in this argument I was just clarifying the original post and countering the reply to it.
No, that's not the logic. The logic is more under the "self fulfilling prophecy" world.
The MPAA claims that they need ultra-strong protection to avoid movie leaks.
They currently don't have these protections and look......the movie leaked.
See? We need these protections.
Needless to say they could guarantee that the "crisis" occurred by leaking it themselves. (This is not saying that they did, but that's the logic of the original post, not leak == bad, mpaa == bad therefor leak == mpaa)
We're supposed to support something that has already failed in the marketplace? (Hint: Think Divx.) Just because they've added a bandwidth crippling download and locked it to your PC without all of the extra DVD-goodness?
Not to mention the charges are HIGHER than at your local video store. $2.99 for a 24-hour rental? Not to mention at lower quality and you can't even play it on your living room TV.
MS isn't about to "panic" from it. Which was what I was replying to. I believe one of the main points of the document was that MS's "panic" and "FUD" that they're spreading about Linux isn't working. So, it looks like they're already "panicing" and now telling everyone to try and "calm down".
Look at how quickly they embraced the internet, and how slow advancement in anything MS gets once their compettion dies up. This should cause you great concern then. MS lept to the Internet and proceeded to crush all competition. Thus by your reasoning advancement is going to slow down. Not exactly what we want to have happen.
But they're also innovative--look at what they did with MS Bob, how they extended HTML to enable round-tripping of documents, and all the uproar they caused when they debuted a (gasp!) wholly new feature called Smart Tags last year. Bob died a quick and painful death. I'm not sure what this "round-tripping of documents" thing is. The reason everyone was upset with Smart Tags was that they were over riding/over laying a linked information documents with links of their own making. (This from the company that said their copyright made it so you couldn't even change the appearance of the Windows desktop.)
MS's products are easy to use simply because they are (1) ubiquitous, (2) standardized (moreso than OSS), and (3) easy to setup. Standardized? Have you looked at the differences between NT 4.0 and 2K admin tasks? Everything changes yet again with XP. Windows is not any easier to set up than Linux. Both require professionals the minute you get slightly out of the ordinary. (Configuring WinModems is one of my least favorite past times.)
Assuming that you can get a windows box, open up "command.com" and type "/?" A list of commands, with short descriptions in an easy-to-read format shows up. In Bash, a "help" command spits out two columns of jargon-filled commands. The commands are often named for obscure thought processes ("more" to read something?) or inside jokes, to boot. First off, the Unix shells are infinitely more powerful than the NT/2K command prompt. Second, "more" is used in both of them. Frankly I'm hard pressed to decide whether "dir/w" or "ls -Fla" is less obvious.
Did you control for Linuxes that didn't work?
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You list three problems on three separate Linux distros. Did you encounter all of those problems on one distro to or just keep switching until it didn't work?
I think the first point is to question how many raw installations of Windows OS's the user has done. You can't go slamming one OS for install problems if you keep getting the other one spoon fed to you on a pre-built PC.
The experience of the "majority" of Windows users are the ones who keep launching viruses from Outlook Express because they don't know how to drive their PC.
Microsoft doesn't write device drivers for most of the hardware. They also aren't responsible for doing the configuration testing on all of those OEM PC's. Heck, they don't even support their OS on those PC's. MS is supposed to provide the foundation that other companies write their driver software to. If they don't properly protect the OS from bad drivers then they're partly to blame.
So, the "bazillion hardware configurations" defense really isn't one. They create the OS and tell everyone how to write the drivers. They create the baseline.
It's make the installation easy versus preconfig?
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Frankly most of these "the installation was hell" stories shows the true choke point of the Windows desktop monopoly.
How many non-PC people can successfully install and configure a Windows PC? Not all that many. How many of us have to keep making house calls to friends and family to fix/rebuild a broken PC? A pretty good amount.
I think the install-issues for Linux should concentrate on the after the initial install world. Adding that digital camera or new printer to the system needs to be quick, easy, and painless. Adding new software should also be relatively newbie proof.
The really interesting thing would be to take a nicely configured Linux box and hand that to a computer newbie. Take another newbie and hand them a nicely configured Windows box. It would be interesting to see how long it would take to notice the difference. (Aside from the lack of an IE icon though we could 'skin' Mozilla to confuse them some.)
It was supposed to be Huckleberry Finn. I screwed up the K by not HTML encoding the less than sign. (Of course I said "Plain Old Text" and it still choked on it.) Trust me it took awhile for me to get that close to 31337 speak myself.:-}
Client/Server is definitely a good way to go with calculation intensive programs. You should also be able to attach and detach the GUI portion from the calculation process.
SOAP probably isn't a great way to go for your communication. SOAP sacrifices speed and size for portability. If you're really worried about the portability at that point then maintain a Unix comm library and a Windows one.
So you're trying to tell me that the "hidden cost of downloading, installing, and configuring" is higher than having to up-rev your OS AND up-rev your Office software? That's a good one.
"Adobe Composer" (you mean Acrobat) isn't free. That's true. However, the Portable Document Format (PDF as it's sometimes called) is a freely available specification that anyone can implement in their software.
Now on to XDocs. XDocs is only about forms. There is nothing in the current Office platform that is aimed at creating universally viewable documents. (Though I suppose you can download, install, and configure the Word Viewer, Excel Viewer, and Powerpoint Viewer but you've already pointed out how expensive that is.)
Microsoft will continue to attempt to maximize the profit they get from Office. I'm not going to lose any sleep over this one.
Well I'm glad that you can so easily see my motivations for things. Especially since I don't seem to see them as clearly as you do. (Yes, the sarcasm is deliberate.)
There's no trap. I was pointing out the problems with the argument that was put forward.
The point was that the person was talking about how this would be good for consumers because they'd save money. I merely pointed out how completely wrong that argument is. Why? Because the current viewer is free and more importantly the specification for PDF is available for use and implementation by anyone.
Nowhere in my post did I make any "consumers are dumb" argument. You merely throw that up as a straw man to dismiss things.
The point is that MS has been perfectly willing in the past to underprice their products in order to run out the competition. They did this in the early days of office by not having copy protection and giving sweetheart deals to OEM's to bundle it. They did it again with IE (free is definitely underpricing) and they're doing it right now in the streaming media market.
I'm glad you brought up oil vs alternative fuels as it's a great parallel. Why? Because Windows and gasoline enjoy the same infrastructure advantage over all alternatives. Look at how much money we've invested in the infrastructure to ensure that we can fill up our cars at the local gas station. Well, Windows is the same thing. It's a huge infrastructure that many developers are counting on to product the programs that support their livelihood.
What does this all mean? It means that normal competitive market influences aren't effective. You not only have to provide something that's technically superior, it has to be so superior as to be able to supplant this entire infrastructure.
1) Consumers will save money: Bzzt. PDF Viewer is free. Additionally, the format for PDF is published so that people can write both viewers and creators for free.
2) Consumers will have extra money: Bzzt. Again wrong. You have PDF which is still free versus a feature that will be included in the latest version of Office, which isn't free. Additionally, XDocs competes with the Forms feature in PDF, not with PDF in general.
So, have you looked at the price MS charges for Office? Oh yeah, in addition you'll need to be running Win 2K SP3 or XP in order to run this version of Office.
Now on to your straw man. The poster wasn't saying that the fall of PDF was going to destroy the economy. He was stating that the settlement handed to MS will give them carte blanche to wage full scale war against any and all "competitors" in the computer industry.
THAT could lead to further damage to the economy as we see how MS prices things once they get control of the market segment.
Back when the US's publishing industry was getting started they "seeded" the market by blatantly taking copyrighted works from England and selling them without paying any royalties. Charles Dickens used to complain about it bitterly.
The US industry used the revenue from this to jump start their own literature industry. As that grew and the US had more literature to export then they became more concerned about fully enforcing copyright laws.
Seems kind of strange that we can't seem to allow other countries to grow the same way we did.
Yes DOS was required to run the programs, but there was a pretty vibrant market for different versions of DOS. While I can't verify it completely, this timeline (http://www.powerload.fsnet.co.uk/timeline.htm) shows a rather vibrant market for various DOS's and GUI's during the days before Windows 3.0 and 3.1.
Again, the clone market was dependent on the breaking of IBM's last IP choke hold on the PC design (BIOS).
The issue with the OEM's wasn't ship Windows or some other OS. The issue was thet MS was using the Windows club to control other software they were shipping with the PC's.
For instance: Compaq was going to the extra time and expense to include Netscape on their PC's. Obviously they felt that that was what customers wanted at the time. MS wrote them a nice letter informing them that their OEM license was being cancelled.
Another example: IBM was shipping some machines with Win 3.1 and OS/2 installed on them. Additionally they were shipping machines with Smart Suite installed on them. MS dragged their heals when it came to negotiating a license for IBM to do OEM installs of Win 95. They went so far as to keep IBM out of the preview and testing groups so that IBM couldn't work out any issues between Win 95 and their PC's until almost the shipping day of Win 95.
Propaganda from MS's Press Release link: Intoductory paragraph: "The dramatic increase in Internet and computer use has generated tremendous benefits for people around the world. Unfortunately, consumers' online activities can also be the target of criminal activity such as intrusion and theft. As a result, security is a primary concern for information technology (IT) consumers." The usual target is the web site that the consumer goes to not the individual consumer.
Further down: "Microsoft supports CC certification because the standards are recognized by over 14 countries, and because its evaluation and certification process helps consumers make informed security decisions. As part of it's commitment to provide customers with a secure platform for Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft submitted the Windows® 2000 operating system for CC certification. By enabling a complete, transparent analysis of Windows 2000 via the Common Criteria's independent government auditors, Microsoft is taking an important step toward building trust in the security of its products." EAL4 only addresses the procedures and documentation processes in the creation of the software. It doesn't address the actual software security itself. Considering both the large number of priviledge elevation attacks and the recently announced vulnerability in PPTP.
An interesting note from their evaluation document under Personnel Assumptions: "Authorized users possess the necessary authorization to access at least some of the information management by the TOE and are expected to act in a cooperating manner in a benign environment." (emphasis added)
So, here you have a press release talking about how W2K's CC Certification means that you'll be more secure when working on the Internet and then you have a note that says users MUST be cooperative and in a benign environment. Well the Internet is neither so that pretty much cancels out the whole press release.
CC Level 4 has nothing to do with security. It has to do with the documentation and control of the development process.
Additionally we don't know what particular changes had to be made to the system in order to get this certification. You may recall the NT 4 certification that required removing network drivers.
Well, if you read the rebuttal supplied by one user then you'll see that they didn't live up to those items.
1. There were behavioral differences with App and Display code combined on the.NET side. 2. Best practices in J2EE are now aimed at the CMP EJB's in the updated EJB spec. Those weren't used. 3. Why not a physical three-tier implmentation? 5. They used a Beta version of MS code versus unknown versions of shipping J2EE servers. 6. The code was reviewed and some major points were raised with the rebuttal.
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No, I have no evidence one way or the other. In fact, I was merely expounding on a "theory" advanced by another user.
It appears that the copy in question is of a cam of a UK screening. That being the case then why are all of the headlines screaming "leaked"? (This isn't just at slashdot.)
The use of the word "leak" implies that something was let out from the official distribution channels rather than merely the fact that the UK started screening the movie a week ahead of the US.
Again, I support no side in this argument I was just clarifying the original post and countering the reply to it.
No, that's not the logic. The logic is more under the "self fulfilling prophecy" world.
...the movie leaked.
The MPAA claims that they need ultra-strong protection to avoid movie leaks.
They currently don't have these protections and look...
See? We need these protections.
Needless to say they could guarantee that the "crisis" occurred by leaking it themselves. (This is not saying that they did, but that's the logic of the original post, not leak == bad, mpaa == bad therefor leak == mpaa)
We're supposed to support something that has already failed in the marketplace? (Hint: Think Divx.) Just because they've added a bandwidth crippling download and locked it to your PC without all of the extra DVD-goodness?
Not to mention the charges are HIGHER than at your local video store. $2.99 for a 24-hour rental? Not to mention at lower quality and you can't even play it on your living room TV.
No, this does not deserve our support.
The Russians beat them to it. :-D
MS isn't about to "panic" from it. Which was what I was replying to.
/w" or "ls -Fla" is less obvious.
I believe one of the main points of the document was that MS's "panic" and "FUD" that they're spreading about Linux isn't working. So, it looks like they're already "panicing" and now telling everyone to try and "calm down".
Look at how quickly they embraced the internet, and how slow advancement in anything MS gets once their compettion dies up.
This should cause you great concern then. MS lept to the Internet and proceeded to crush all competition. Thus by your reasoning advancement is going to slow down. Not exactly what we want to have happen.
But they're also innovative--look at what they did with MS Bob, how they extended HTML to enable round-tripping of documents, and all the uproar they caused when they debuted a (gasp!) wholly new feature called Smart Tags last year.
Bob died a quick and painful death. I'm not sure what this "round-tripping of documents" thing is. The reason everyone was upset with Smart Tags was that they were over riding/over laying a linked information documents with links of their own making. (This from the company that said their copyright made it so you couldn't even change the appearance of the Windows desktop.)
MS's products are easy to use simply because they are (1) ubiquitous, (2) standardized (moreso than OSS), and (3) easy to setup.
Standardized? Have you looked at the differences between NT 4.0 and 2K admin tasks? Everything changes yet again with XP. Windows is not any easier to set up than Linux. Both require professionals the minute you get slightly out of the ordinary. (Configuring WinModems is one of my least favorite past times.)
Assuming that you can get a windows box, open up "command.com" and type "/?" A list of commands, with short descriptions in an easy-to-read format shows up. In Bash, a "help" command spits out two columns of jargon-filled commands. The commands are often named for obscure thought processes ("more" to read something?) or inside jokes, to boot.
First off, the Unix shells are infinitely more powerful than the NT/2K command prompt. Second, "more" is used in both of them. Frankly I'm hard pressed to decide whether "dir
You list three problems on three separate Linux distros. Did you encounter all of those problems on one distro to or just keep switching until it didn't work?
Just curious as you provide such a variety there.
I think the first point is to question how many raw installations of Windows OS's the user has done. You can't go slamming one OS for install problems if you keep getting the other one spoon fed to you on a pre-built PC.
The experience of the "majority" of Windows users are the ones who keep launching viruses from Outlook Express because they don't know how to drive their PC.
Microsoft doesn't write device drivers for most of the hardware. They also aren't responsible for doing the configuration testing on all of those OEM PC's. Heck, they don't even support their OS on those PC's. MS is supposed to provide the foundation that other companies write their driver software to. If they don't properly protect the OS from bad drivers then they're partly to blame.
So, the "bazillion hardware configurations" defense really isn't one. They create the OS and tell everyone how to write the drivers. They create the baseline.
Frankly most of these "the installation was hell" stories shows the true choke point of the Windows desktop monopoly.
How many non-PC people can successfully install and configure a Windows PC? Not all that many. How many of us have to keep making house calls to friends and family to fix/rebuild a broken PC? A pretty good amount.
I think the install-issues for Linux should concentrate on the after the initial install world. Adding that digital camera or new printer to the system needs to be quick, easy, and painless. Adding new software should also be relatively newbie proof.
The really interesting thing would be to take a nicely configured Linux box and hand that to a computer newbie. Take another newbie and hand them a nicely configured Windows box. It would be interesting to see how long it would take to notice the difference. (Aside from the lack of an IE icon though we could 'skin' Mozilla to confuse them some.)
It was supposed to be Huckleberry Finn. I screwed up the K by not HTML encoding the less than sign. (Of course I said "Plain Old Text" and it still choked on it.) Trust me it took awhile for me to get that close to 31337 speak myself. :-}
Imagine the kids 200 years from now reading |-|uc||_3b3rry F1|\||\|.
(That hurts my brain just trying to type it in...)
OSKit/HURD?
Have you looked at the size of the parking spaces over there?
Client/Server is definitely a good way to go with calculation intensive programs. You should also be able to attach and detach the GUI portion from the calculation process.
SOAP probably isn't a great way to go for your communication. SOAP sacrifices speed and size for portability. If you're really worried about the portability at that point then maintain a Unix comm library and a Windows one.
So you're trying to tell me that the "hidden cost of downloading, installing, and configuring" is higher than having to up-rev your OS AND up-rev your Office software? That's a good one.
"Adobe Composer" (you mean Acrobat) isn't free. That's true. However, the Portable Document Format (PDF as it's sometimes called) is a freely available specification that anyone can implement in their software.
Now on to XDocs. XDocs is only about forms. There is nothing in the current Office platform that is aimed at creating universally viewable documents. (Though I suppose you can download, install, and configure the Word Viewer, Excel Viewer, and Powerpoint Viewer but you've already pointed out how expensive that is.)
Microsoft will continue to attempt to maximize the profit they get from Office. I'm not going to lose any sleep over this one.
Well I'm glad that you can so easily see my motivations for things. Especially since I don't seem to see them as clearly as you do. (Yes, the sarcasm is deliberate.)
There's no trap. I was pointing out the problems with the argument that was put forward.
The point was that the person was talking about how this would be good for consumers because they'd save money. I merely pointed out how completely wrong that argument is. Why? Because the current viewer is free and more importantly the specification for PDF is available for use and implementation by anyone.
Nowhere in my post did I make any "consumers are dumb" argument. You merely throw that up as a straw man to dismiss things.
The point is that MS has been perfectly willing in the past to underprice their products in order to run out the competition. They did this in the early days of office by not having copy protection and giving sweetheart deals to OEM's to bundle it. They did it again with IE (free is definitely underpricing) and they're doing it right now in the streaming media market.
I'm glad you brought up oil vs alternative fuels as it's a great parallel. Why? Because Windows and gasoline enjoy the same infrastructure advantage over all alternatives. Look at how much money we've invested in the infrastructure to ensure that we can fill up our cars at the local gas station. Well, Windows is the same thing. It's a huge infrastructure that many developers are counting on to product the programs that support their livelihood.
What does this all mean? It means that normal competitive market influences aren't effective. You not only have to provide something that's technically superior, it has to be so superior as to be able to supplant this entire infrastructure.
See the ol' chicken and the egg dilemna.
Let's look at your arguments here.
1) Consumers will save money:
Bzzt. PDF Viewer is free. Additionally, the format for PDF is published so that people can write both viewers and creators for free.
2) Consumers will have extra money:
Bzzt. Again wrong. You have PDF which is still free versus a feature that will be included in the latest version of Office, which isn't free. Additionally, XDocs competes with the Forms feature in PDF, not with PDF in general.
So, have you looked at the price MS charges for Office? Oh yeah, in addition you'll need to be running Win 2K SP3 or XP in order to run this version of Office.
Now on to your straw man. The poster wasn't saying that the fall of PDF was going to destroy the economy. He was stating that the settlement handed to MS will give them carte blanche to wage full scale war against any and all "competitors" in the computer industry.
THAT could lead to further damage to the economy as we see how MS prices things once they get control of the market segment.
Back when the US's publishing industry was getting started they "seeded" the market by blatantly taking copyrighted works from England and selling them without paying any royalties. Charles Dickens used to complain about it bitterly.
The US industry used the revenue from this to jump start their own literature industry. As that grew and the US had more literature to export then they became more concerned about fully enforcing copyright laws.
Seems kind of strange that we can't seem to allow other countries to grow the same way we did.
Yes DOS was required to run the programs, but there was a pretty vibrant market for different versions of DOS. While I can't verify it completely, this timeline (http://www.powerload.fsnet.co.uk/timeline.htm) shows a rather vibrant market for various DOS's and GUI's during the days before Windows 3.0 and 3.1.
Again, the clone market was dependent on the breaking of IBM's last IP choke hold on the PC design (BIOS).
...it was always hinted that Hillary Clinton enjoyed presidential power.
Also, we know that Ms. Lewinsky definitely "enjoyed presidential power".
The "PC Clone market" emerged when Compaq successfully reverse engineered the PC BIOS and built the first fully license-free PC.
That had absolutely nothing to do with MS and the licensing of DOS. Remember back in the old days the question was: "Is this PC 100% IBM compatible?"
Frankly, back in the day there were multiple companies selling DOS. There were even some successful GUI's before Windows 3.0.
The thing that got the clone market going was the fact that you could in fact clone the IBM PC.
The issue with the OEM's wasn't ship Windows or some other OS. The issue was thet MS was using the Windows club to control other software they were shipping with the PC's.
For instance: Compaq was going to the extra time and expense to include Netscape on their PC's. Obviously they felt that that was what customers wanted at the time. MS wrote them a nice letter informing them that their OEM license was being cancelled.
Another example: IBM was shipping some machines with Win 3.1 and OS/2 installed on them. Additionally they were shipping machines with Smart Suite installed on them. MS dragged their heals when it came to negotiating a license for IBM to do OEM installs of Win 95. They went so far as to keep IBM out of the preview and testing groups so that IBM couldn't work out any issues between Win 95 and their PC's until almost the shipping day of Win 95.
Propaganda from MS's Press Release link:
Intoductory paragraph:
"The dramatic increase in Internet and computer use has generated tremendous benefits for people around the world. Unfortunately, consumers' online activities can also be the target of criminal activity such as intrusion and theft. As a result, security is a primary concern for information technology (IT) consumers."
The usual target is the web site that the consumer goes to not the individual consumer.
Further down:
"Microsoft supports CC certification because the standards are recognized by over 14 countries, and because its evaluation and certification process helps consumers make informed security decisions. As part of it's commitment to provide customers with a secure platform for Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft submitted the Windows® 2000 operating system for CC certification. By enabling a complete, transparent analysis of Windows 2000 via the Common Criteria's independent government auditors, Microsoft is taking an important step toward building trust in the security of its products."
EAL4 only addresses the procedures and documentation processes in the creation of the software. It doesn't address the actual software security itself. Considering both the large number of priviledge elevation attacks and the recently announced vulnerability in PPTP.
An interesting note from their evaluation document under Personnel Assumptions:
"Authorized users possess the necessary authorization to access at least some of the information management by the TOE and are expected to act in a cooperating manner in a benign environment." (emphasis added)
So, here you have a press release talking about how W2K's CC Certification means that you'll be more secure when working on the Internet and then you have a note that says users MUST be cooperative and in a benign environment. Well the Internet is neither so that pretty much cancels out the whole press release.
CC Level 4 has nothing to do with security. It has to do with the documentation and control of the development process.
Additionally we don't know what particular changes had to be made to the system in order to get this certification. You may recall the NT 4 certification that required removing network drivers.
Finally a Beowolf cluster easy enough to build for everyone saying "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these..."
Well, if you read the rebuttal supplied by one user then you'll see that they didn't live up to those items.
.NET side.
1. There were behavioral differences with App and Display code combined on the
2. Best practices in J2EE are now aimed at the CMP EJB's in the updated EJB spec. Those weren't used.
3. Why not a physical three-tier implmentation?
5. They used a Beta version of MS code versus unknown versions of shipping J2EE servers.
6. The code was reviewed and some major points were raised with the rebuttal.