But these are system calls, and should not be part of the IIS application itself. Of course, Microsoft loooves to say everything is part of the OS, and we can't see the actual calls that are being made, but whatever is being called should be outside of IIS in order for the article to make sense.
I'll agree. I don't hate Microsoft because it's beautiful, you know. I have very well thought-out and detailed reasons why I hate them:
Mediocre software. It works, but it most certainly is not innovative in most respects, despite what the marketing department tells you. It takes a while for it to get reasonably useful, but that's years down the road.
Arrogance towards other software and developers. "We know what's best for you, you don't need what you think you need." This response to security has come back to bite them on their fat pork buttocks.
Killing competition through any means except merit. Netscape, Stack, DR-DOS, Linux (not dead yet, thank you) as "cancer", and hundreds of small developers who were "inspected" under a maybe-contract and then imitated out of existence. (like Sendo?)
Marketing that speaks mostly whatever they think people want to hear, instead of the truth. This just plain offends my sense of righteousness. My momma told me that it is wrong to lie. As a result, never trust anything Microsoft says, only believe what Microsoft does
No, the water argument is not invalid. I was speaking solely in reference to Microsoft as an OS provider, not as a media medium [sic]. By controlling the OS, they have an ease of presentation that no one else can have, and one that is not based on the merits or competition.
The prevalence of the iPod also proves my point that no one can play on Microsoft's turf. Apple basically had to create a new platform to escape the MS monopoly, so they are outside of any hindrance Redmond might wish to provide... except a weak form of competition via MSN crap-- just as it should be.
I will fully agree with you that Real has also damaged itself with their own tactics; but I was also always under the impression that they viewed this as their only means of survival against shutout via the Windows Über Alles campaign.
My original comment, which I still stand by, is that Windows dominance was not because they screwed over their customers-- even if their auxiliary features are sorta crappy, at least they're "free" from the user's perspective-- but because they leverage their OS monopoly in ways that no one else can. If they weren't selling Windows, you wouldn't be using Windows Media Player if it was a separate, downloadable product just like RealPlayer. IMHO RealPlayer has always had better visual quality and network streaming performance than WMP, despite their desire to be your browser and adserver and media-everything.
But it comes as no surprise to me that people don't care about Windows XP N. Do you want dessert with free whipped cream on top, or without? The "rants of anger" against MS in the original article were caused by their unfair tactics against other companies, not by jilted consumers. My comment was never about the choices people had in producing or consuming media... just that WMP Would Not Be were it not for the MS OS monopoly.
No, it is not theoretical. The WMV format is very "me-too" as is typical with most Microsoft products, notwithstanding their antitrust trial claims of "innovation". It would not stand in the market on its own, except that MS ships the codec with Windows. I would hardly call Real, QuickTime, and DivX "huge" players, merely alternates.
I would liken this to the water company giving you the option of taking crappy cola from your home tap for free, yet being able to charge you more for water. It is an unfair advantage over the Real Cola companies where you actually have to walk into the store to get a quality product. There are always people who are willing to go get an extra product, but the Real Cola company is a less viable because it is forbidden the option of delivering Real Cola via water tap.
It is ridiculous to say that Microsoft has no advantage in pretending to give away crap for free, yet charge more for Windows. Real Media formats were almost completely squished out of the market because of this, and remain a second player SOLELY because people have to make the extra effort to go get it; only by playing Microsoft's game are they able to keep a foothold. It is also debatable whether the artificially high barrier to entry in these markets has not discouraged a more vigorous competition. Other "competitors" to Microsoft have had to shift the playing ground away from the PC (e.g, iPod) merely to get a foothold and become huge players.
The problem with MS hasn't usually been that they screw customers over so much, it's that they gain their customer base in such an unfair way. Can you say that customers don't like a free media player on their machine when they get it? The unfair part of this is that MS has the unfair advantage of leveraging its OS monopoly to block out competitors in the multimedia area--*THAT* is the problem.
No one is forced to do anything. It does, however, give you a choice. Write your own from scratch, or use this one under the condition that you return it back to the community. No one is making the producer of software contribute anything; you merely have an additional choice (to use the GPL'd stuff) beyond what you would have had if the GPL'd stuff didn't exist in the first place.
People before contributed based on either monetary motivations, or on the free will of giving it away completely. The GPL is a choice somewhere in between.
The Register author says "Many participants join... and context is often a casualty" yet he fails to explain whether or how this has supposedly happened on Groklaw. So suspicion equals truth? Why can't those who refute Groklaw ever actually point to an instance where what has been posted is factually wrong? Even those most interested in the case (e.g, Darl McBride) have completely failed on this point. PJ on Groklaw points out that Andrew Orlowski merely *missed* the point.
Maybe goldspider is just reaffirming his beliefs here on Slashdot, with his own context a casualty. Perhaps it would be better if he allows those who want to do the research and watch the case closely to do so, while he ignores it as is his choice.
This is the same guy that figured Microsoft could kill Linux by merely writing "drivers" for it.
Once again, he ponders out loud as if he had some clue. But I have never seen any dire predictions he has made ever come to fruition. Can you find one (challenge!)?
What keeps the game industry going is not novelty, but keeping the current generation of gamers wowed until they get replaced by younger, newer gamers coming in. Will it change over time? Yes, almost certainly. But I don't think it will ever die.
Repeat after me, "Dvorak is stooooopid. Never listen to him."
We shouldn't ask "can we blog without legal repercussions?" since that is not the issue here. The issue is, is blog reporting equivalent to "true" journalism?
Dvorak seems to have these amazing insights from time to time, but I can't seem to remember one that really came to fruition. In the aritcle, he makes all these assumptions about technology but he doesn't know what he's talking about. Then he uses his unfounded assumptions to conclude that all MS needs to do is embrace and extend Linux.
For a more thorough discussion on this very article, see this discussion on Groklaw. Search for the second "Dvorak".
--dv
For the same reasons they should bother themselves with supporting a non-free OS (Windows), and the same ways increased sales of Microsoft's OS is going to benefit them. Rather orthogonal concerns, I'd say.
One problem I have always had with LeGuin's works, is that she says so much with so few words. It is easy for me to miss the impact of what has just occurred in the story, and that is what happened for me here.
So at the risk of showing my ignorance again, I will state that she is the exception for most women in the series. I can think of no other woman who had such high power that was not also that weird dragon/human hybrid type like the scarred dragon/girl Therru or the mysterious Irian (the Dragonfly story).
I realized after I has submitted my comment that the statement you refer to was imprecise; I should have said "only men perform significant magic" or maybe "only men are wizards". Women as witches perform minor and somewhat ignorant magic, while men as sorcerers are more learned and men as wizards are moreso.
I happen to have the first book next to me-- mostly an influence of the series. The girl you refer to is mentioned as "half a witch already" and as the daughter of an "enchantress". (What the distinction is between a witch and an enchantress is not explained, if there is any.) When he meets her later she has little magic of her own, but is in cahoots with an old sorcerer. She does have the magic to transform herself into a bird, however.
The main difference is that men are allowed to study and learn magic from books and other high wizards, while the women are left to what they can glean from superstition, limited insight, and the less learned sorcerers. Why this distinction is created in the books, I don't think I will ever understand; it seems arbitrary to me, but is a consistent aspect of Earthsea.
The Earthsea books are a series of short novels set in the fantasy world of Earthsea. There are five of them: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, and The Other Wind. The author has also penned a book of several short stories in the same setting.
Briefly, Earthsea is a world composed of hundreds of islands. The society is non-industrial, but magic is an integral component of everyday life. Women are seen as a lower class, and only men perform magic. Otherwise, the rest of the world is "normal" in our sense, except that dragons are a reality, though their presence is rare.
The books tell tales of a few recurring characters, most notably a wizard named Sparrowhawk (also known as Ged). If the producers of such a series went through all the trouble to proclaim this as based on Earthsea, you would think they would have been more faithful to the books. However, they seem to have written a completely different story, with some small number aspects of the original sprinkled throughout the shows. The end result is something that barely resembles the books and thus loses its uniqueness as a fantasy world.
It seems that the NY Times review (Registration required.) of the series is dead on: what is left is a mishmash of various fantasy stories, sort of Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings meets Hercules meets Star Wars.
Anyone hoping to see a film version of the beloved books is going to have his hopes dashed upon the thorny rocks. Instead a different story is presented, using people with the same names but completely different experiences. Anyone hoping to learn about the books by watching them will be misled into thinking they are shallow cookie-cutter versions of everything else. Imagine if Frodo had "lived happily ever after" when he kept the ring himself to bring peace to the world... even though Tolkien never envisioned such a world.
Undoubtedly, a film producer must change the story presented on screen in order to compensate for the differences between visual and printed media, but this is one of the sloppiest adaptations I have ever seen. Ms LeGuin's comments only underscore my own opinion (or is it the other way around??). Don't watch it, unless you don't care whether the Earthsea movies match the Earthsea books, then it won't matter anyway.
--dv
It has something to do with the minimum size of magnetic domains. The crystalline structure of magnetic materials isn't much smaller than 1E11/sq.in. You need enough domains next to each other to maintain the magnetic alignment of a bit; otherwise they begin to flip randomly (data loss) or are undistinguishable from adjacent domains (low s/n ratio).
This is based on my memory though, and not on direct reference from any authentic source though, so consider that my reasons may not be accurate.
RTFA RTFA RTFA (before the Slashdot Effect rears its head, of course). The article describes where the additional storage bitspace comes from:
... When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit.
Unlike existing optical disks, MODS disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a 'step' sunk within at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back.
So 332 angles means another ~16.3 bits of data per pit. "Tens of gigs" * 16.3 could give close to a TB, depending on your number of tens.
No, bush is not a monkey! He's a self-serving, self-righteous, screw-the-world-we're-good-they're-evil man who refuses to put himself above reproach and who can't be bothered with detail. Only a man could be that destructive.
Doesn't seem stupid or insane, merely desperate; it's lawyers doing everything possible to win an apparently losing case. They seem to be in territory nowhere near where they expected to be from the beginning, as their original plan was to be bought out to shut them up.
What would you do as a lawyering firm expected to do everything possible to win the case for your client?
Slashdot Mirror
Woah. Who knew that Microsoft's competitive internal teams and closed-source development was counter-productive?
I wish I could upvote you.
But these are system calls, and should not be part of the IIS application itself. Of course, Microsoft loooves to say everything is part of the OS, and we can't see the actual calls that are being made, but whatever is being called should be outside of IIS in order for the article to make sense.
--dv
Those are off the top of my head. Any questions?
No, the water argument is not invalid. I was speaking solely in reference to Microsoft as an OS provider, not as a media medium [sic]. By controlling the OS, they have an ease of presentation that no one else can have, and one that is not based on the merits or competition.
The prevalence of the iPod also proves my point that no one can play on Microsoft's turf. Apple basically had to create a new platform to escape the MS monopoly, so they are outside of any hindrance Redmond might wish to provide... except a weak form of competition via MSN crap-- just as it should be.
I will fully agree with you that Real has also damaged itself with their own tactics; but I was also always under the impression that they viewed this as their only means of survival against shutout via the Windows Über Alles campaign.
My original comment, which I still stand by, is that Windows dominance was not because they screwed over their customers-- even if their auxiliary features are sorta crappy, at least they're "free" from the user's perspective-- but because they leverage their OS monopoly in ways that no one else can. If they weren't selling Windows, you wouldn't be using Windows Media Player if it was a separate, downloadable product just like RealPlayer. IMHO RealPlayer has always had better visual quality and network streaming performance than WMP, despite their desire to be your browser and adserver and media-everything.
But it comes as no surprise to me that people don't care about Windows XP N. Do you want dessert with free whipped cream on top, or without? The "rants of anger" against MS in the original article were caused by their unfair tactics against other companies, not by jilted consumers. My comment was never about the choices people had in producing or consuming media... just that WMP Would Not Be were it not for the MS OS monopoly.
--dv
No, it is not theoretical. The WMV format is very "me-too" as is typical with most Microsoft products, notwithstanding their antitrust trial claims of "innovation". It would not stand in the market on its own, except that MS ships the codec with Windows. I would hardly call Real, QuickTime, and DivX "huge" players, merely alternates.
I would liken this to the water company giving you the option of taking crappy cola from your home tap for free, yet being able to charge you more for water. It is an unfair advantage over the Real Cola companies where you actually have to walk into the store to get a quality product. There are always people who are willing to go get an extra product, but the Real Cola company is a less viable because it is forbidden the option of delivering Real Cola via water tap.
It is ridiculous to say that Microsoft has no advantage in pretending to give away crap for free, yet charge more for Windows. Real Media formats were almost completely squished out of the market because of this, and remain a second player SOLELY because people have to make the extra effort to go get it; only by playing Microsoft's game are they able to keep a foothold. It is also debatable whether the artificially high barrier to entry in these markets has not discouraged a more vigorous competition. Other "competitors" to Microsoft have had to shift the playing ground away from the PC (e.g, iPod) merely to get a foothold and become huge players.
Why would this not be a clear case to you?
--dv
The problem with MS hasn't usually been that they screw customers over so much, it's that they gain their customer base in such an unfair way. Can you say that customers don't like a free media player on their machine when they get it? The unfair part of this is that MS has the unfair advantage of leveraging its OS monopoly to block out competitors in the multimedia area--*THAT* is the problem.
--dv
No one is forced to do anything. It does, however, give you a choice. Write your own from scratch, or use this one under the condition that you return it back to the community. No one is making the producer of software contribute anything; you merely have an additional choice (to use the GPL'd stuff) beyond what you would have had if the GPL'd stuff didn't exist in the first place.
People before contributed based on either monetary motivations, or on the free will of giving it away completely. The GPL is a choice somewhere in between.
--dv
The Register author says "Many participants join... and context is often a casualty" yet he fails to explain whether or how this has supposedly happened on Groklaw. So suspicion equals truth? Why can't those who refute Groklaw ever actually point to an instance where what has been posted is factually wrong? Even those most interested in the case (e.g, Darl McBride) have completely failed on this point. PJ on Groklaw points out that Andrew Orlowski merely *missed* the point.
Maybe goldspider is just reaffirming his beliefs here on Slashdot, with his own context a casualty. Perhaps it would be better if he allows those who want to do the research and watch the case closely to do so, while he ignores it as is his choice.
--dv
This is the same guy that figured Microsoft could kill Linux by merely writing "drivers" for it.
Once again, he ponders out loud as if he had some clue. But I have never seen any dire predictions he has made ever come to fruition. Can you find one (challenge!)?
What keeps the game industry going is not novelty, but keeping the current generation of gamers wowed until they get replaced by younger, newer gamers coming in. Will it change over time? Yes, almost certainly. But I don't think it will ever die.
Repeat after me, "Dvorak is stooooopid. Never listen to him."
"Dvorak is stooooopid. Never listen to him."
--dv
--dv
We shouldn't ask "can we blog without legal repercussions?" since that is not the issue here. The issue is, is blog reporting equivalent to "true" journalism?
--dv
And "fecha" means date...
If I had mod points, I'd mod myself redundant. We all thought we were soooo clever.
--dv
Did anyone else immediately see this as the "first clusterf*ck version of Windows"?
--dv
Dvorak seems to have these amazing insights from time to time, but I can't seem to remember one that really came to fruition. In the aritcle, he makes all these assumptions about technology but he doesn't know what he's talking about. Then he uses his unfounded assumptions to conclude that all MS needs to do is embrace and extend Linux. For a more thorough discussion on this very article, see this discussion on Groklaw. Search for the second "Dvorak". --dv
For the same reasons they should bother themselves with supporting a non-free OS (Windows), and the same ways increased sales of Microsoft's OS is going to benefit them. Rather orthogonal concerns, I'd say.
--dv
Once again, you are correct.
One problem I have always had with LeGuin's works, is that she says so much with so few words. It is easy for me to miss the impact of what has just occurred in the story, and that is what happened for me here.
So at the risk of showing my ignorance again, I will state that she is the exception for most women in the series. I can think of no other woman who had such high power that was not also that weird dragon/human hybrid type like the scarred dragon/girl Therru or the mysterious Irian (the Dragonfly story).
--dv
You are correct.
I realized after I has submitted my comment that the statement you refer to was imprecise; I should have said "only men perform significant magic" or maybe "only men are wizards". Women as witches perform minor and somewhat ignorant magic, while men as sorcerers are more learned and men as wizards are moreso.
I happen to have the first book next to me-- mostly an influence of the series. The girl you refer to is mentioned as "half a witch already" and as the daughter of an "enchantress". (What the distinction is between a witch and an enchantress is not explained, if there is any.) When he meets her later she has little magic of her own, but is in cahoots with an old sorcerer. She does have the magic to transform herself into a bird, however.
The main difference is that men are allowed to study and learn magic from books and other high wizards, while the women are left to what they can glean from superstition, limited insight, and the less learned sorcerers. Why this distinction is created in the books, I don't think I will ever understand; it seems arbitrary to me, but is a consistent aspect of Earthsea.
--dv
Briefly, Earthsea is a world composed of hundreds of islands. The society is non-industrial, but magic is an integral component of everyday life. Women are seen as a lower class, and only men perform magic. Otherwise, the rest of the world is "normal" in our sense, except that dragons are a reality, though their presence is rare.
The books tell tales of a few recurring characters, most notably a wizard named Sparrowhawk (also known as Ged). If the producers of such a series went through all the trouble to proclaim this as based on Earthsea, you would think they would have been more faithful to the books. However, they seem to have written a completely different story, with some small number aspects of the original sprinkled throughout the shows. The end result is something that barely resembles the books and thus loses its uniqueness as a fantasy world.
It seems that the NY Times review (Registration required.) of the series is dead on: what is left is a mishmash of various fantasy stories, sort of Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings meets Hercules meets Star Wars.
Anyone hoping to see a film version of the beloved books is going to have his hopes dashed upon the thorny rocks. Instead a different story is presented, using people with the same names but completely different experiences. Anyone hoping to learn about the books by watching them will be misled into thinking they are shallow cookie-cutter versions of everything else. Imagine if Frodo had "lived happily ever after" when he kept the ring himself to bring peace to the world... even though Tolkien never envisioned such a world.
Undoubtedly, a film producer must change the story presented on screen in order to compensate for the differences between visual and printed media, but this is one of the sloppiest adaptations I have ever seen. Ms LeGuin's comments only underscore my own opinion (or is it the other way around??). Don't watch it, unless you don't care whether the Earthsea movies match the Earthsea books, then it won't matter anyway. --dv
It has something to do with the minimum size of magnetic domains. The crystalline structure of magnetic materials isn't much smaller than 1E11/sq.in. You need enough domains next to each other to maintain the magnetic alignment of a bit; otherwise they begin to flip randomly (data loss) or are undistinguishable from adjacent domains (low s/n ratio).
This is based on my memory though, and not on direct reference from any authentic source though, so consider that my reasons may not be accurate.
--dv
I stand corrected. ~8 bits is the correct dimension.
So 332 angles means another ~16.3 bits of data per pit. "Tens of gigs" * 16.3 could give close to a TB, depending on your number of tens.
No, bush is not a monkey! He's a self-serving, self-righteous, screw-the-world-we're-good-they're-evil man who refuses to put himself above reproach and who can't be bothered with detail. Only a man could be that destructive.
Oh, btw, I'm american.
Doesn't seem stupid or insane, merely desperate; it's lawyers doing everything possible to win an apparently losing case. They seem to be in territory nowhere near where they expected to be from the beginning, as their original plan was to be bought out to shut them up.
What would you do as a lawyering firm expected to do everything possible to win the case for your client?
I'll still be rubbing my hands with glee anyway.