Like I said, the system wasn't mission-critical. I was basically asked to hack it together. If it worked, great. If it didn't, no big deal. And considering that I had no budget for the system, I really had no options. I had bunch of obsolete machines, and few more or less modern desktop-machines. But I did it, and it worked great.
Had the requirements been greater, I would have used proper server-hardware. But the requirements weren't big, and the money was not there, so I used what I had available.
Like I said, I haven't seen anything like that. But then again, the installations I have seen/worked on weren't Windows-installations, but LTSP-installations (completely different animal than Windows). And while the setups weren't that large, the servers weren't that powerful either.
1. Cheaper machines: have you taken into account the price of the server(s)? Have you taken into account that server price grows EXPONENTIALLY with the number of user it can handle, while desktop price increase is LINEAR?
Just about all organisations need servers. So the difference between the two approaches is not that great. It's not like you need to have server in thin-client environment, but you do not need them in fat-client environment. Both environments have servers.
And in some installations I built, the "servers" were actually regural 1GHz desktops (the installtion was not mission-critical). In fact, it was just 1GHz AMD Duron-machine! Hardly expensive even back then! Add it handled regural tasks just fine.
2. Reliability: again, you are only looking at what you want. Remember you need additiona infrastructure! If the server or the network breaks, everything breaks.
If the servers or network break in regural fat-client environments, you will also have problems. Again, the difference between the two is not that big. Both will have problem if network-services go down. And the problem can me reduced by careful planning and redundancy.
3. Ease of service: But what happens if the server breaks?.
Answer: redundant servers. What happens if the server goes down in a regural fat-client environment? You will have problems regardless.
4. Longevity: New applications means new and more powerful server iron, with new cooling systems, etc., every few years.
Or not. And the servers are usually better specced that desktops are. Even if software-requirements go up, you do not have to upgrade the servers. And if you have some apps that need REALLY powerful hardware (well, running that sort of software on the clients would be expensive as well, since you would need hi-end workstations), you could have a dedicated server just for that app.
And again: you have to just handle few servers, instead of dozens of workstations.
5. Ergonomy: there are plenty of almost silent desktops with very small footprint.
And they cost extra. And I'm not talking about "almost" silent, I'm talking about completely silent systems. Can you provide any links to systems that you had in mind?
You neglect to mention that *using* thin clients sucks monkey nuts.
They do? I have built LTSP-systems, and they seem to work just fine. Clients were 100Mhz (or so) Pentiums with 32MB of RAM, and the servers were in the 1GHz range. Network was regural switched 100MB Ethernet. And everything worked smoothly. Hell, I could watch near DVD-quality movies on the server, and the client still had bandwidth to spare! And in many cases the thin-clients had BETTER performance than fat-clients. Reason being that many times the apps that were loaded on the clients, were already on the servers RAM, since someone else had already launched the app from another client. So the app loaded instanteniously (since it didn't have to be loaded from the HD)
Not to mention if one person uses all the terminal server's CPU everyone else's thinclient freezes up.
That's why you could use more than one server and more than one CPU.
Sounds to me like you did your thesis purely from the admin standpoint and forgot about the poor suckers who have to use the godforsaken things.
Like I said, I did USE the "godforsaken things", and they worked very, very well. Using regural apps worked just fine, as did watching movies (although I never bothered to make the sound work on the clients, I just wanted to see that could it be done). Granted, this was with LTSP, I don't know how well (or badly) Windows would work.
Are you *crazy*? If they can't handle VCRs, they can't handle thin-clients.
IMO they could handle the clients. The cables could be color-coded, and the users could receive a 5-minute training telling them what to do if their machine really breaks down. They would have to plug in 5 color-coded cables (power, network, monitor, mouse and keyboard), and three of those (power, network and monitor) would only fit one port and the other two (keyboard & mouse, using USB) could be plugged to any USB-port.
Just to play devil's advocate, what do you do when the server breaks down?
Redundancy. Instead of having one server, have two (or three, if you feel like playing it safe). If one of them breaks down, the other one can carry on as usual while the other one is getting fixed. the users who were connected to the crashed server do need to restart their machines.
But this isn't really that much different when compared to "normal" setups. If some central server crashes, it will cause problems to the organisation. Even if they use fat clients.
Why would anyone choose to cripple perfectly good PC's, especially if they have to pay for it?
I did my final thesis on the subject. The reasons for using thin-clients instead of full-blown desktops are numerous:
1. Cheaper machines. Minimal amount of RAM and CPU-power, no HD etc. etc. It does add up, and it does save money. And thin-client consume less electricity as well.
2. Reliability. No fans that could break, no HD's that could break. No moving parts at all (unless the machine is equipped with a CD-drive).
3. Ease of service. The thin-client breaks down, what do you do? Unplug it, plug another machine in it's place, continue working. It takes about 5 minutes. Hell, the user could do it himself!
4. Longevity. You don't have to replace the clients in order to use newer software. Also, you could convert your obsolete desktops to thin-clients. Instead of buying new machines every few years, you could keep on using your machines for 5-10 years.
5. Ergonomy. Totally silent operation, tiny footprint. All that makes for a nicer working-environment
6. Ease of administration. No need to run around fixing clients, just work on the servers instead.
Pretty big? Smaller than Montana or California. Less than half the size of Texas. Less than one quarter of the size of Alaska.
And your point was? Fact is that Finland has alot lower population-density than USA does, and still we have nationwide-coverage. And you can't compare Finland's population-density to some remote location in USA (if you are about to do that). If you did that, you should compare remote locations in USA to remote locations in Finland (like Lapland). There is no real reason why USA shouldn't have nationwide coverage. Yes, USA is bigger, but you have alot more consumers as well. If Finnish operators can cover areas like Lapland with cell-phone masts, then surely American operators can do the same in USA.
But hey, if your "point" was just to mention "you are not big! We have places here that are bigger than Finland!", you comment has been duly noted, and labeled as irrelevant. So Finland is smaller than some areas in USA or Russia (two humungous countries). Well color me surprised! Hey, USA isn't that big either! When compared to Pacific Ocean, you are downright tiny! And don't get me started with Jupiter....
This may the one legal inanity out of hundreds of legal inanities that causes me to wilfully and deliberately violate the GPL with glee.
So, because you don't like the license, you feel that you have the right to ignore the rights of the copyright-holders? You believe that people should not have the right to license their work as they like? Or do you think that they should only be allowed to license them in a way you accept (and that propably means BSD-license)?
If you really believe that, then you sir are a Grade A asshat.
This whole thing stems from a legal oversight no-one even thought of. I'm pretty sure that the creators of GPL didn't intent to use it with fonts and documents created with those fonts. And it's even debatable that does the GPL-restrictions even apply in case like this. But you can take comfort in the fact that your hatred for the GPL has been noted. Not that your opinion matters one bit, but still.
But if I ever write any software, I'll release it under the GPL. Just to piss off assholes like you.
Uh. That's capitalism at work. Because it's not as profitable to cover the entire country, as it is to cover just selected portions.
That's why your socialist country has to force the telcos to cover your country.
Well, Finland is pretty big as well (a bit smaller than Germany), with only a bit over 5 million people living there (people per 1 square kilometer: 17. That's not alot. USA has about 30 people per square kilometer). And most of the inhabitants are focused on the southern parts of the country. And even still, the whole country (even the parts with very few inhabitants, like Lapland) has cell-phone coverage. And our operators are regulated as well.
Not only we have kick-ass coverage, we have low prices that keep on going lower and lower. And we have true competition. All phones work with all operators, and you can change operators at will, and you can keep your phone AND your phone-number. Since it's very easy for people to switch operators, the operators are driving their prices down and their services are usually filled to the brink with features (caller-ID, conference-calls, call-blocking, mobile data, upstream datalinks, SMS-messages, multimedia-messages etc. etc. etc.).
The way I see it, the fact that our operators are regulated have given the people humungous benefits. Not only does it give us kick-ass services, it actually enforces competition. People are not tied to one particular operator, instead they can choose between 4 major operators, and each of those have nationwide-coverage. And each of them are competing like crazy in order to keep their existing customers, and to get new customers. Thanks to the regulation that makes sure that switching operators is very easy and simple.
It doesn't benefit the telcos - they actually make less money than they would if they covered a smaller and more profitable area.
Some might say that we get these benefits by "punishing" the operators. But it doesn't seem to be so. The operators are doing fine, and since we have such a kick-ass service, people are using the serives more, and that result in more profits and revenue to the operators.
In USA the market is alot less regulated. And from our viewpoint it has led to stagntion (phones that are tied to one particular operator? WTF?!), poor service, poor coverage and high prices. If someone in Finland said that "you really think that you should be able to use your cell-phone in your home?" he would be laughed out the door. Many people don't even have landline phones anymore, they only have cell-phones. Like myself.
IBM knows multithreading so they can do it. And while it's not as good as real SMP/multicore is, it's relatively cheap as far as transistors are concerned. SMP/multicore doubles the number of transistors and give about 70-80% benefit in SMP-aware apps. Multithreading adds something like 10% more transistors and gives 20-40% improvement in SMP-aware apps.
Integrated mem-controller is not rocket-science, and it would give the PowerMac alot more effective bandwidth (since FSB is not used for accessing the RAM, the FSB can be dedicated to other uses) and alot lower latencies.
The "middle-ground" PowerMac: 1x multithreading, dualcore G5 at 2.4Ghz with integrated mem-controller.
This would give nice speed-boost when compared to to the low-end PowerMac, and it would be considerably faster than the fastest PowerMac there is right now.
The hi-end PowerMac: 2x multithreading, dualcore G5's at 2.8Ghz with integrated mem-controllers.
This would effectively double the bandwidth of the system when compared to the other PowerMacs. It could handle 8 threads simultaneously (2 CPU's, two cores per CPU, two threads per core), compared to 4 and 2 on the other PM's.
Of course, each system would also have PCI-express. The integrated mem-controllers could be DDR2-variety.
Assuming they could bring the heat down a bit on the CPU's, I think what I propose could be doable. The hi-end model might require liquid-cooling (like the current hi-end PM does) though.
Re:The morality of the story:
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Tracking Your Taxes
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· Score: 2, Interesting
In Finland the employer automatically deducts the taxes from the salary. It goes like this: I tell the tax-authorities the amount of money I will be earning that year (well, I don't really have to do it, they try to guess the sum based on my past earnings). you can tell them any amount you wish. End result is that if you tell a low amount, your tax-% will be low. But if you earn more than you told them, you will be required to pay extra taxes at the end of the year. Likewise: if you tell a high amount, you will get high tax-%, but you will get money back, if you don't earn that much in reality.
After I have told the authorities the relevant information, they mail me a document wich says "your tax-% is this", and I hand that document to my employer, who deducts the correct sum from my salary.
I usually tell larger sum that what I think I will earn. Why? It's pretty simple:
a) That way I can get a raise during the year, without going over the limit I told the authorities b) When I get my monthly salary and see the amount of money I receive, I plan my future expenses around that sum. When I get a tax-return in the end of the year, it feels like "extra" money, since I had already made my purchasing-decisions and the like based on an assumption that I pay certain amount of taxes and I get no tax-returns. The amount of money I lose on interests is neglible.
Related to this: the tax-returns and the like work like this: They mail you some forms where they tell you "we calculated your taxes like this, and this is the number we will pay you back/you have to pay us. If the numbers are correct, don't do anything. If there are some things you would like to change, use the attached form to do so". Basically you just fill in all kinds of extra expenses that you can deduct (commuting-expenses, interests on mortage, purchases of equipment you need for your work (books, computers, broadband, tools etc. etc. depending on your work)). Attach some receipts to the form, and you are all set. The whole preocess takes about 30 minutes if you have the receipts you need.
All in all, the whole process is very simple and easy. It seems like the tax-hell of Finland has alot simpler taxation than USA does:). We don't have any software to help us pay our taxes, since the whole process is so simple.
In my book, the "Ultimate Prank" took place in Stockholm, and it was carried out by Finnish technology-students. the prank itself is not widely known around the world, but it is IMO the best prank ever made. The story:
There is a well-known (to Finns) statue of Paavo Nurmi in Helsinki. Apart from that big statue, there are lots of smaller replicas of that statue. What does this have to do with pranks? Read on.
HMS Wasa is a famous Swedish warship that sank on her maiden-voyage. Year was 1628. the ship was re-discovered in 1961. The ship had sunked to depth of 62 meters. As the ship was re-discovered, it made big headlines in Sweden.
As it happens, there were some Finnish students from Helsinki University of Technology were visiting Stockholm when Wasa was re-discovered. And they decided to play the ultimate prank. They bought a miniature Paavo Nurmi-statue and went to the site where Wasa was discovered. The area was closely guarded, but somehow the students managed to dive in to the ship, made their way to the captains quarters, and placed the statue there. No-one knew that they had been down there, and they haven't told how they managed to do it.
As the ship was re-srufaced, experts started to study it. Only to find a relatively modern statue in the captains quarters. I can only imagine the collective "Huh?" they had when they found it:). the students had engraved their contact-information to the statue, and the students in question held a big news-conference about the incident, further annoying the Swedes.
You are woefully ignorant of the anti-Americanism that has flourished in Europe since the end of WWII, and especially since the end of the Cold War.
Considering that I live here and I can witness the reactions of ther egural people firsthand, I fail to see how that could be true. Were there disagreements between the two? Sure! Were there some left-wing nutjobs who thought USA was the devil? Sure! How did the regural folks feel? They LIKED USA! Yes, they really did. But that is not the case anyore. And it happened very fast.
Because, you know, America-bashing never happened before George W. Bush. Just ignore the Reagan years, the Vietnam years, and the French.
in case you didn't know, the French were USA's closest allies for a long time. And Europe and USA were really close during the 80's and 90's. I remember than when I was a kid, people _admired_ USA. Everyone felt that Europe and USA were friends and that both respected the other. Of course there were disagreements now and then, but overall the two seemed really close.
But now things are different. Europe and USA (and Europeans and Americans) seem to hate each other. And the change has been really swift! Yes, It happened during GWB. During Clinton, Bush Senior and Reagan things were alot better. Things started going downhill after GWB became president. And it went downhill FAST.
Other countries have experienced terrorism for many decades without doing anything about it. Indeed, they worked to maintain the status quo in the Middle East.
What does Mid East have to do with IRA and Basque separatists for example? Both of those have terrorized various European countries for a long time.
But the question is WHY? And the answer is because users like Microsoft products. To criminally punish Microsoft for consumer preferences is asinine.
MS gained their dominance through illegal means. They forced OEM's to pay them no matter what systems they shipped. they sabotaged DR-DOS (A vastly superior alternative to MS-DOS) and the killed Netscape. Customer preference had very little to do with it. The customers weren't really offered any valid alternatives. If they were, the alternatives were quickly killed by Microsoft.
Microsoft is being punished by their past and current activities that are illegal. And they have done plenty of things that are illegal. They are not being punished because consumers want their products, they are being punished because their products gained dominance through illegal means. And they are being punished because they are (illegally) trying to leverage their dominace in an attempt to dominate yet another fields of business.
they can instantly satutare 90+% of the market, they can push their own codecs that do not work as well (or not at all) on competing players or on competing platforms, they can extend their monopoly to other areas etc. etc. We already saw this in web-browser, yet there are STILL people who do not see it happening in other markets as well!
I really don't see how a media-player is an integral part of an operating-system. By your logic, MS could eliminate competition in just about all areas since they could just say "well, you see this thing here is part of Windows". By bundling Media Player to Windows, they can saturate the market. And doing that, they can dominate what content is played back and what codecs do they use. competitors (both in client and platform-area) would suddenly notice that most of the content would only play back on MS's Media Player using Windows. We would have yet another monopoly in our hands.
If Windows shipped without an Internet browser and a media player, it would be unnecisarily hindered.
Perhaps. And then the consumer would have to choose between several media-players, instead of relying on the one provided by MS. And that would increase competition, instead of allowing MS to take over that market by default.
Should users be responsible for adding this to their systems? Remember Joe Sixpack and Grandma May when you consider this.
If Joe Sixpack and Grandma are unable to install a simple application to their systems, maybe they really shouldn't own or operate computer in the first place?
Fact is that bundling WMP with Windows is simply an attempt by MS to use their monopoly to gain dominance in other unrelated market. And that is ILLEGAL. No matter how much you say "but it's convenient!" changes that fact. Yes, in the short-term it might be inconvenient if we expect the user to use his brains for few minutes and install a third-party app, but in the long run it will result it great benefits. Maybe the users will be at least marginally smarter than they are today, and we would have real competition in this market, instead of having yet another monopoly that limits choice and innovation.
This was debated in the last/. story about WMP's removal. If WMP is to be removed, that *includes* the back end, meaning all the MS codecs and DLLs that provide the functionality. The WMP front end is not WMP, just a GUI.
In that case they would have to use some other media-formats, instead of proprietary MS-formats. By doing that, they break the codec-player-OS hegemony that would result in reduced competition. In the short-run it MIGHT be a bit more inconvenient, but in the long run, there are lots of benefits (except for Microsoft).
A monopoly in media players? Huh? This is a non-issue.
Like monopoly in web-browsers is a non-issue? Monopoly in media-players could help MS achieve monopoly in media-formats. And they could make other apps depend on Media Player, further limiting choice and competition.
If MS controls the tool to play back media, they control the media. They can limit distribution-methods, codecs, platforms and content.
Media players, both closed and open source, are free and easily attainable.
Irrelevant. If MS bundles their Media Plyer to their monopoly-product they have a huge advantage their competitors do not have and they are breaking the law. MS can the proceed to tie Media Plyer to the function of the monopoly-product in such way that if you want to use the monopoly-product, you have to use their Media Player. Instant dominace in the market.
As far as your 2 points, I don't mean to say I think Microsoft should be able to do what they want without repercussion. The problem is that the EU is asking MS to do things that simply don't make sense. The fines are logical, but they need to come up with some demands that will really help the competition as you say, not just annoy MS.
And removing their ability to use their existing monopoly (in operating systems) to push their dominance in to another area (media-players) makes ALOT of sense! Not only does it restore competition, it also corrects action that is illegal. Using an existing monopoly to gain dominance in another field is ILLEGAL. By bundling IE and Media Player to Windows MS is doing exactly that. They are "leveraging Windows".
In other words, something their competitiors failed to earn on merit. Don't patronize me. MS may have an almost universally dominant position on the desktop, but there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
It doesn't quite work that way. MS can coerce re-sellers, OEM, developers etc. to not use competing products (like what happened with Netscape). They can leverage their control of the platform and use it as a distribution-method (in short: using their existing monopoly to gain monopoly in other markets. This happened with Netscape and DR-DOS (another superior product that MS killed), where Windows would not work on top of DR-DOS).
Even if the competition has a superior product, it does not mean that it will win. Espesially if the dominant player has a monopoly. Monopoly gives MS a huge advantage. Everyone must spend time trying to be compatible with Microsoft, and Microsoft can use their monopoly to spread in to other markets (media, web-browsers, content-delivery etc.). Microsoft can leverage their monopoly (and they have done so), whereas competitors can not.
In business where true competition thrives, the superior product will win. But there is no real competition in fields dominated by Microsoft. Just about every computer ships with Windows, every Windows ships with IE. Websites are designed for IE, and support for those other superior products is spotty at best.
How would you explain the fact that Internet Explorer, a browser with a feature-set from the year 1999, has about 90% market-share? Could it be that it's share is maintained by distributing it alongside a monopoly-product? if we only looked at features and the like, IE should have a market-share in around 5%, but it doesn't, because it has support from MS's illegal activities and bundling. And that SERIOUSLY limits the advance of superior alternatives.
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Like I said, the system wasn't mission-critical. I was basically asked to hack it together. If it worked, great. If it didn't, no big deal. And considering that I had no budget for the system, I really had no options. I had bunch of obsolete machines, and few more or less modern desktop-machines. But I did it, and it worked great.
Had the requirements been greater, I would have used proper server-hardware. But the requirements weren't big, and the money was not there, so I used what I had available.
Like I said, I haven't seen anything like that. But then again, the installations I have seen/worked on weren't Windows-installations, but LTSP-installations (completely different animal than Windows). And while the setups weren't that large, the servers weren't that powerful either.
Just about all organisations need servers. So the difference between the two approaches is not that great. It's not like you need to have server in thin-client environment, but you do not need them in fat-client environment. Both environments have servers.
And in some installations I built, the "servers" were actually regural 1GHz desktops (the installtion was not mission-critical). In fact, it was just 1GHz AMD Duron-machine! Hardly expensive even back then! Add it handled regural tasks just fine.
If the servers or network break in regural fat-client environments, you will also have problems. Again, the difference between the two is not that big. Both will have problem if network-services go down. And the problem can me reduced by careful planning and redundancy.
Answer: redundant servers. What happens if the server goes down in a regural fat-client environment? You will have problems regardless.
Or not. And the servers are usually better specced that desktops are. Even if software-requirements go up, you do not have to upgrade the servers. And if you have some apps that need REALLY powerful hardware (well, running that sort of software on the clients would be expensive as well, since you would need hi-end workstations), you could have a dedicated server just for that app.
And again: you have to just handle few servers, instead of dozens of workstations.
And they cost extra. And I'm not talking about "almost" silent, I'm talking about completely silent systems. Can you provide any links to systems that you had in mind?
They do? I have built LTSP-systems, and they seem to work just fine. Clients were 100Mhz (or so) Pentiums with 32MB of RAM, and the servers were in the 1GHz range. Network was regural switched 100MB Ethernet. And everything worked smoothly. Hell, I could watch near DVD-quality movies on the server, and the client still had bandwidth to spare! And in many cases the thin-clients had BETTER performance than fat-clients. Reason being that many times the apps that were loaded on the clients, were already on the servers RAM, since someone else had already launched the app from another client. So the app loaded instanteniously (since it didn't have to be loaded from the HD)
That's why you could use more than one server and more than one CPU.
Like I said, I did USE the "godforsaken things", and they worked very, very well. Using regural apps worked just fine, as did watching movies (although I never bothered to make the sound work on the clients, I just wanted to see that could it be done). Granted, this was with LTSP, I don't know how well (or badly) Windows would work.
IMO they could handle the clients. The cables could be color-coded, and the users could receive a 5-minute training telling them what to do if their machine really breaks down. They would have to plug in 5 color-coded cables (power, network, monitor, mouse and keyboard), and three of those (power, network and monitor) would only fit one port and the other two (keyboard & mouse, using USB) could be plugged to any USB-port.
5 color-coded cables, 5 color-coded ports.
Redundancy. Instead of having one server, have two (or three, if you feel like playing it safe). If one of them breaks down, the other one can carry on as usual while the other one is getting fixed. the users who were connected to the crashed server do need to restart their machines.
But this isn't really that much different when compared to "normal" setups. If some central server crashes, it will cause problems to the organisation. Even if they use fat clients.
I did my final thesis on the subject. The reasons for using thin-clients instead of full-blown desktops are numerous:
1. Cheaper machines. Minimal amount of RAM and CPU-power, no HD etc. etc. It does add up, and it does save money. And thin-client consume less electricity as well.
2. Reliability. No fans that could break, no HD's that could break. No moving parts at all (unless the machine is equipped with a CD-drive).
3. Ease of service. The thin-client breaks down, what do you do? Unplug it, plug another machine in it's place, continue working. It takes about 5 minutes. Hell, the user could do it himself!
4. Longevity. You don't have to replace the clients in order to use newer software. Also, you could convert your obsolete desktops to thin-clients. Instead of buying new machines every few years, you could keep on using your machines for 5-10 years.
5. Ergonomy. Totally silent operation, tiny footprint. All that makes for a nicer working-environment
6. Ease of administration. No need to run around fixing clients, just work on the servers instead.
And your point was? Fact is that Finland has alot lower population-density than USA does, and still we have nationwide-coverage. And you can't compare Finland's population-density to some remote location in USA (if you are about to do that). If you did that, you should compare remote locations in USA to remote locations in Finland (like Lapland). There is no real reason why USA shouldn't have nationwide coverage. Yes, USA is bigger, but you have alot more consumers as well. If Finnish operators can cover areas like Lapland with cell-phone masts, then surely American operators can do the same in USA.
But hey, if your "point" was just to mention "you are not big! We have places here that are bigger than Finland!", you comment has been duly noted, and labeled as irrelevant. So Finland is smaller than some areas in USA or Russia (two humungous countries). Well color me surprised! Hey, USA isn't that big either! When compared to Pacific Ocean, you are downright tiny! And don't get me started with Jupiter....
So, because you don't like the license, you feel that you have the right to ignore the rights of the copyright-holders? You believe that people should not have the right to license their work as they like? Or do you think that they should only be allowed to license them in a way you accept (and that propably means BSD-license)?
If you really believe that, then you sir are a Grade A asshat.
This whole thing stems from a legal oversight no-one even thought of. I'm pretty sure that the creators of GPL didn't intent to use it with fonts and documents created with those fonts. And it's even debatable that does the GPL-restrictions even apply in case like this. But you can take comfort in the fact that your hatred for the GPL has been noted. Not that your opinion matters one bit, but still.
But if I ever write any software, I'll release it under the GPL. Just to piss off assholes like you.
Not only we have kick-ass coverage, we have low prices that keep on going lower and lower. And we have true competition. All phones work with all operators, and you can change operators at will, and you can keep your phone AND your phone-number. Since it's very easy for people to switch operators, the operators are driving their prices down and their services are usually filled to the brink with features (caller-ID, conference-calls, call-blocking, mobile data, upstream datalinks, SMS-messages, multimedia-messages etc. etc. etc.).
The way I see it, the fact that our operators are regulated have given the people humungous benefits. Not only does it give us kick-ass services, it actually enforces competition. People are not tied to one particular operator, instead they can choose between 4 major operators, and each of those have nationwide-coverage. And each of them are competing like crazy in order to keep their existing customers, and to get new customers. Thanks to the regulation that makes sure that switching operators is very easy and simple.
Some might say that we get these benefits by "punishing" the operators. But it doesn't seem to be so. The operators are doing fine, and since we have such a kick-ass service, people are using the serives more, and that result in more profits and revenue to the operators.
In USA the market is alot less regulated. And from our viewpoint it has led to stagntion (phones that are tied to one particular operator? WTF?!), poor service, poor coverage and high prices. If someone in Finland said that "you really think that you should be able to use your cell-phone in your home?" he would be laughed out the door. Many people don't even have landline phones anymore, they only have cell-phones. Like myself.
IIRC HD-DVD's can be manufactured in the current production-lines, whereas Blu-Ray requires new equipment. And that means higher costs.
What I would like to see is this:
Low-end PowerMac: 1x 2Ghz Multithreading (two threads) G5 with integrated mem-controller.
IBM knows multithreading so they can do it. And while it's not as good as real SMP/multicore is, it's relatively cheap as far as transistors are concerned. SMP/multicore doubles the number of transistors and give about 70-80% benefit in SMP-aware apps. Multithreading adds something like 10% more transistors and gives 20-40% improvement in SMP-aware apps.
Integrated mem-controller is not rocket-science, and it would give the PowerMac alot more effective bandwidth (since FSB is not used for accessing the RAM, the FSB can be dedicated to other uses) and alot lower latencies.
The "middle-ground" PowerMac: 1x multithreading, dualcore G5 at 2.4Ghz with integrated mem-controller.
This would give nice speed-boost when compared to to the low-end PowerMac, and it would be considerably faster than the fastest PowerMac there is right now.
The hi-end PowerMac: 2x multithreading, dualcore G5's at 2.8Ghz with integrated mem-controllers.
This would effectively double the bandwidth of the system when compared to the other PowerMacs. It could handle 8 threads simultaneously (2 CPU's, two cores per CPU, two threads per core), compared to 4 and 2 on the other PM's.
Of course, each system would also have PCI-express. The integrated mem-controllers could be DDR2-variety.
Assuming they could bring the heat down a bit on the CPU's, I think what I propose could be doable. The hi-end model might require liquid-cooling (like the current hi-end PM does) though.
In Finland the employer automatically deducts the taxes from the salary. It goes like this: I tell the tax-authorities the amount of money I will be earning that year (well, I don't really have to do it, they try to guess the sum based on my past earnings). you can tell them any amount you wish. End result is that if you tell a low amount, your tax-% will be low. But if you earn more than you told them, you will be required to pay extra taxes at the end of the year. Likewise: if you tell a high amount, you will get high tax-%, but you will get money back, if you don't earn that much in reality.
:). We don't have any software to help us pay our taxes, since the whole process is so simple.
After I have told the authorities the relevant information, they mail me a document wich says "your tax-% is this", and I hand that document to my employer, who deducts the correct sum from my salary.
I usually tell larger sum that what I think I will earn. Why? It's pretty simple:
a) That way I can get a raise during the year, without going over the limit I told the authorities
b) When I get my monthly salary and see the amount of money I receive, I plan my future expenses around that sum. When I get a tax-return in the end of the year, it feels like "extra" money, since I had already made my purchasing-decisions and the like based on an assumption that I pay certain amount of taxes and I get no tax-returns. The amount of money I lose on interests is neglible.
Related to this: the tax-returns and the like work like this: They mail you some forms where they tell you "we calculated your taxes like this, and this is the number we will pay you back/you have to pay us. If the numbers are correct, don't do anything. If there are some things you would like to change, use the attached form to do so". Basically you just fill in all kinds of extra expenses that you can deduct (commuting-expenses, interests on mortage, purchases of equipment you need for your work (books, computers, broadband, tools etc. etc. depending on your work)). Attach some receipts to the form, and you are all set. The whole preocess takes about 30 minutes if you have the receipts you need.
All in all, the whole process is very simple and easy. It seems like the tax-hell of Finland has alot simpler taxation than USA does
Short answer: yes
In my book, the "Ultimate Prank" took place in Stockholm, and it was carried out by Finnish technology-students. the prank itself is not widely known around the world, but it is IMO the best prank ever made. The story:
:). the students had engraved their contact-information to the statue, and the students in question held a big news-conference about the incident, further annoying the Swedes.
There is a well-known (to Finns) statue of Paavo Nurmi in Helsinki. Apart from that big statue, there are lots of smaller replicas of that statue. What does this have to do with pranks? Read on.
HMS Wasa is a famous Swedish warship that sank on her maiden-voyage. Year was 1628. the ship was re-discovered in 1961. The ship had sunked to depth of 62 meters. As the ship was re-discovered, it made big headlines in Sweden.
As it happens, there were some Finnish students from Helsinki University of Technology were visiting Stockholm when Wasa was re-discovered. And they decided to play the ultimate prank. They bought a miniature Paavo Nurmi-statue and went to the site where Wasa was discovered. The area was closely guarded, but somehow the students managed to dive in to the ship, made their way to the captains quarters, and placed the statue there. No-one knew that they had been down there, and they haven't told how they managed to do it.
As the ship was re-srufaced, experts started to study it. Only to find a relatively modern statue in the captains quarters. I can only imagine the collective "Huh?" they had when they found it
further info (in Finnish though)
And, AFAIK, "Hoary Hedgehog" is also a codename. The name of the OS is Ubuntu Linux, this is version 5.04, further known as Hoary Hedgehog.
There was no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaida. That fact has been officially verified.
I'm sorry, but Steve Jobs has reserved and trademarked the word "BOOM" for his keynotes and/or OS X demos.
in case you didn't know, the French were USA's closest allies for a long time. And Europe and USA were really close during the 80's and 90's. I remember than when I was a kid, people _admired_ USA. Everyone felt that Europe and USA were friends and that both respected the other. Of course there were disagreements now and then, but overall the two seemed really close.
But now things are different. Europe and USA (and Europeans and Americans) seem to hate each other. And the change has been really swift! Yes, It happened during GWB. During Clinton, Bush Senior and Reagan things were alot better. Things started going downhill after GWB became president. And it went downhill FAST.
What does Mid East have to do with IRA and Basque separatists for example? Both of those have terrorized various European countries for a long time.
What does war in Iraq have to do with preventing terrorism?
MS gained their dominance through illegal means. They forced OEM's to pay them no matter what systems they shipped. they sabotaged DR-DOS (A vastly superior alternative to MS-DOS) and the killed Netscape. Customer preference had very little to do with it. The customers weren't really offered any valid alternatives. If they were, the alternatives were quickly killed by Microsoft.
Microsoft is being punished by their past and current activities that are illegal. And they have done plenty of things that are illegal. They are not being punished because consumers want their products, they are being punished because their products gained dominance through illegal means. And they are being punished because they are (illegally) trying to leverage their dominace in an attempt to dominate yet another fields of business.
really, this is not rocket-science.
they can instantly satutare 90+% of the market, they can push their own codecs that do not work as well (or not at all) on competing players or on competing platforms, they can extend their monopoly to other areas etc. etc. We already saw this in web-browser, yet there are STILL people who do not see it happening in other markets as well!
I really don't see how a media-player is an integral part of an operating-system. By your logic, MS could eliminate competition in just about all areas since they could just say "well, you see this thing here is part of Windows". By bundling Media Player to Windows, they can saturate the market. And doing that, they can dominate what content is played back and what codecs do they use. competitors (both in client and platform-area) would suddenly notice that most of the content would only play back on MS's Media Player using Windows. We would have yet another monopoly in our hands.
Perhaps. And then the consumer would have to choose between several media-players, instead of relying on the one provided by MS. And that would increase competition, instead of allowing MS to take over that market by default.
If Joe Sixpack and Grandma are unable to install a simple application to their systems, maybe they really shouldn't own or operate computer in the first place?
Fact is that bundling WMP with Windows is simply an attempt by MS to use their monopoly to gain dominance in other unrelated market. And that is ILLEGAL. No matter how much you say "but it's convenient!" changes that fact. Yes, in the short-term it might be inconvenient if we expect the user to use his brains for few minutes and install a third-party app, but in the long run it will result it great benefits. Maybe the users will be at least marginally smarter than they are today, and we would have real competition in this market, instead of having yet another monopoly that limits choice and innovation.
In that case they would have to use some other media-formats, instead of proprietary MS-formats. By doing that, they break the codec-player-OS hegemony that would result in reduced competition. In the short-run it MIGHT be a bit more inconvenient, but in the long run, there are lots of benefits (except for Microsoft).
Like monopoly in web-browsers is a non-issue? Monopoly in media-players could help MS achieve monopoly in media-formats. And they could make other apps depend on Media Player, further limiting choice and competition.
If MS controls the tool to play back media, they control the media. They can limit distribution-methods, codecs, platforms and content.
Irrelevant. If MS bundles their Media Plyer to their monopoly-product they have a huge advantage their competitors do not have and they are breaking the law. MS can the proceed to tie Media Plyer to the function of the monopoly-product in such way that if you want to use the monopoly-product, you have to use their Media Player. Instant dominace in the market.
And removing their ability to use their existing monopoly (in operating systems) to push their dominance in to another area (media-players) makes ALOT of sense! Not only does it restore competition, it also corrects action that is illegal. Using an existing monopoly to gain dominance in another field is ILLEGAL. By bundling IE and Media Player to Windows MS is doing exactly that. They are "leveraging Windows".
It doesn't quite work that way. MS can coerce re-sellers, OEM, developers etc. to not use competing products (like what happened with Netscape). They can leverage their control of the platform and use it as a distribution-method (in short: using their existing monopoly to gain monopoly in other markets. This happened with Netscape and DR-DOS (another superior product that MS killed), where Windows would not work on top of DR-DOS).
Even if the competition has a superior product, it does not mean that it will win. Espesially if the dominant player has a monopoly. Monopoly gives MS a huge advantage. Everyone must spend time trying to be compatible with Microsoft, and Microsoft can use their monopoly to spread in to other markets (media, web-browsers, content-delivery etc.). Microsoft can leverage their monopoly (and they have done so), whereas competitors can not.
In business where true competition thrives, the superior product will win. But there is no real competition in fields dominated by Microsoft. Just about every computer ships with Windows, every Windows ships with IE. Websites are designed for IE, and support for those other superior products is spotty at best.
How would you explain the fact that Internet Explorer, a browser with a feature-set from the year 1999, has about 90% market-share? Could it be that it's share is maintained by distributing it alongside a monopoly-product? if we only looked at features and the like, IE should have a market-share in around 5%, but it doesn't, because it has support from MS's illegal activities and bundling. And that SERIOUSLY limits the advance of superior alternatives.